The Seattle Seahawks have never had a 14-win regular season. It is slightly astounding that they are in prime position to do so for the first time after an offseason that featured a near-total churn of players and coaches on offense.
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Entering the season, running back Kenneth Walker III and tackles Charles Cross and Abraham Lucas comprised the totality of Seahawks players on that side of the ball who had been with the team for more than two years. Yet here they are, atop the NFC with a chance to claim the top seed in the conference for the first time in over a decade.
Teams don’t do this. They simply don’t trade their starting quarterback and a star receiver from a 10-win team – especially with a defense that was already very good – and immediately get better. However, president of football operations/general manager John Schneider and head coach Mike Macdonald saw back then what has become readily apparent now: the Seahawks would not not sitting here at 12-3, on the cusp of greatness, had they tried to make it work with DK Metcalf and Geno Smith.
We have learned over the course of his two seasons that one of Macdonald’s greatest strengths as a coach is his ability to quickly cut his losses and fix an issue. Really, “fix” might be a disservice to what has actually happened: the problem area turns into a strength.
If there is a commonality to why these moves have been successful, we can look to what linebacker Ernest Jones IV and offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak embody that their predecessors did not: the understanding of working towards the greater good of building a Super Bowl caliber team.
DK Metcalf and Geno Smith would not subsume themselves into the identity that Macdonald had for his team. They are good players and have the numbers to back it up, but this version of the Seahawks could never work without the complete buy-in from two fundamental pieces on offense.
The impetus for that realization comes from this past weekend, when Metcalf walked over to a Detroit fan and proceeded to try to punch or shove him. We can quibble on the exact verb of what took place, but what is undeniable is how unnecessary and detrimental it was to his current team. It also lends itself to the memory of Macdonald’s first training camp, when Metcalf swung a helmet at defensive back Tre Brown during practice. In hindsight, perhaps the writing had been on the wall the entirety of the 2024 season.
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To say that the Seahawks are atop the NFC because they traded Smith and Metcalf is an oversimplification; many teams win Super Bowls with players that don’t gel with the rest of the locker room. But it is tough to envision this season going as smoothly as it has with those personalities at the forefront, instead of what has been accomplished with Sam Darnold and Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
That was the second part of the bold offseason overhaul, the belief that those two were ready to step into the spotlight and shoulder the weight of the offense.
It has brought the Seahawks here, two wins from claiming the No. 1 seed in the NFC and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. Needless to say, that is a pretty big deal – especially when you consider that all three times the Seahawks have been the No. 1 seed, they have gone on to reach the Super Bowl.
More on the Seattle Seahawks
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• Are Seahawks now the NFC favorite? Sheil Kapadia’s take
• NFL upholds one-game suspension for Seahawks’ Derick Hall
• What led to Seahawks’ uncharacteristic defensive issues vs Rams?
• The mind-boggling numbers from Seattle Seahawks’ epic comeback win
