{"id":1036035,"date":"2026-10-24T18:39:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T18:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/1036035\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T18:39:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T18:39:13","slug":"chiefs-seahawks-5-questions-with-field-gulls-ahead-of-week-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/1036035\/","title":{"rendered":"Chiefs-Seahawks: 5 questions with Field Gulls ahead of Week 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs<\/a> face the Seattle Seahawks <\/a>in a Sunday night lights of Week 7 games. We welcome John Gilbert<\/a> of Field Gulls \u2014 our sister SBNation site covering the Chargers\u2014 for Five Questions with the Enemy.<\/p>\n

Chiefs Kingdom, bring the noise to the SB Nation app!<\/p>\n

Join fellow Chiefs fans to react to every explosive play and game-changing moment in real time.<\/p>\n

Chat live throughout the gameBrowse with fewer adsEasily jump between communitiesEnjoy faster commenting and posting<\/p>\n

Download the SB Nation app on your mobile device and join the Field Gulls community through Sunday\u2019s game to get perspectives from both sides of the Week 7 matchup!<\/p>\n

1.The Seahawks are 3-3 after losing three of their last four games, with all three losses coming by three points or fewer. They also committed 10 turnovers in those three losses. What has been the biggest reason the defending Super Bowl champions have struggled to close out games this season?<\/p>\n

You hit the nail on the head with the turnovers. The Commanders had touchdown drives of 21 and 43 yards, along with a pick six, while the 49ers had touchdown drives of 18 yard and 11 yards to go along with a defensive touchdown when the Seahawks fumbled in their own end zone.<\/p>\n

In spite of all the issues with turnovers during the four stretch, the game was tied or the Seahawks held the lead in the fourth quarter of all three losses. However, instead of closing out the game like the 2025 squad would have, they have been unable to put the ball in the end zone when needed in high leverage situations.<\/p>\n

2. Sam Darnold has thrown seven touchdowns and seven interceptions, including four interceptions during Seattle\u2019s current two-game losing streak. Mike Macdonald has publicly stated that he is not considering a quarterback change. How confident is Seattle that Darnold can rediscover the form that helped lead the Seahawks to a championship?<\/p>\n

The $100.5M question since the Seahawks signed Darnold in free agency ahead of the 2025 season was which version of him were they getting. Were they getting the quarterback who threw for 4,153 yards and 35 touchdowns through Week 17, or the one who was sacked eleven times while throwing a single touchdown over the final two games of his Vikings career?<\/p>\n

The reality is, Darnold is who he is, and he often struggles against pressure. His torrid performance during the first half of the 2025 season was largely driven by Klint Kubiak using a lot of 12 and 13 personnel, which defenses defended by loading the box, which in turn created one on one matchups for receivers with single-high safety looks. Kubiak and Darnold feasted on this, but in Week 11 the Rams showed the league it was far more effective to match the Seattle offense based on down and distance rather than personnel. As a result of that, over the second half of the 2025 season the team played at a high level and won ten games in a row, but the offense sputtered at times as the explosive plays that had propelled the early season success became more rare.<\/p>\n

That leads to the question of what the difference between the second half of 2025 and the start of 2026 is, and it comes down to several parts. First, Darnold does not look to be moving like he is fully healthy just yet after suffering a glute injury on the fifth snap of the season opener against the Patriots. Add to that an injury to starting right guard Anthony Bradford, combined with the loss of both of the top two running backs from the 2025 season in Zach Charbonnet and Kenneth Walker. Bradford has certainly struggled at times as a pass protector in his career, but he\u2019s a 330 pound guard with a mean streak who can make his presence known as a people mover in the ground game. Losing Walker has certainly hurt and I\u2019ll cover that in more detail in the next question, but not having Charbonnet for the first six weeks has likely had a significant impact on the ability of the team to put points on the board in the red zone. Charbonnet lacks Walker\u2019s explosiveness, but throughout his career he has been a very disciplined runner and has been very effective and productive in the red zone, and they\u2019ve lacked ground production in the red zone as it took until Week 4 before a Seattle running back scored a rushing touchdown this year.<\/p>\n

3. Seattle allowed Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker III to leave in free agency, and he now returns to Lumen Field with 665 rushing yards and six rushing touchdowns through five games. How does the organization\u2019s decision to move on from Walker look now that the Seahawks have struggled to establish consistency in their backfield?<\/p>\n

This is a discussion that began before the 2025 season even ended, escalated when Charbonnet was lost to a torn ACL in the postseason and has not really ceased or even slowed in months since. The reality is it was unlikely Walker would be retained due to the market he created for himself with his performance down the stretch and in the postseason.<\/p>\n

Walker has an undeniable physical skillset, but that skillset did not always translate into consistent on field production, and in every season of his career in Seattle he posted the lowest success rate of all running backs on the roster. Simultaneously, he consistently finished in the bottom half of the league in stuff rate in each of those years, and while he improved every year, the Seahawks apparently weren\u2019t interested in paying market rate for Walker\u2019s services while continuing to show the improvement he demonstrated late in the 2025 season.<\/p>\n

This was a direct result of Walker\u2019s propensity to try and bounce runs to the outside and then win a foot race to the corner. When he wins that race and turns the corner, it\u2019s routinely a big play, but especially on zone runs he failed to run within the system and follow his reads regularly enough. Interestingly, Klint Kubiak tweaked his playcalling tendencies with Walker, specifically giving Walker the ball on gap runs at a rate higher than he had called for any running back during his career as an offensive coordinator, and then over the course of the season called for Walker to carry the ball behind zone blocking more and more.<\/p>\n

And now it appears that Andy Reid and Chiefs fans are the beneficiary of that, and so far it\u2019s looking like an absolute home run signing for Kansas City.<\/p>\n

On the Seattle side, first round pick Jadarian Price landing on injured reserve and Charbonnet spending the first six weeks of the season on the PUP list has only exacerbated the frustration of fans who did not want to see Walker depart. So, while George Holani and Emanuel Wilson haven\u2019t lived up to the high hopes of Seahawks fans, those two were undrafted coming out of college for a reason and Charbonnet returning combined with Darnold protecting the ball better should see the situation improve.<\/p>\n

4. Seattle enters this matchup ranked first in the NFL in total defense, allowing only 237 yards per game, and Andy Reid called Mike Macdonald\u2019s unit \u201cthe best in the business.\u201d What is the biggest matchup advantage the Seahawks\u2019 defense has against Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs\u2019 offense?<\/p>\n

The biggest thing a Mike Macdonald defense does is play stout and disciplined against the run, which eventually creates third and long situations where they can create unfavorable matchups for the offense with pressure and\/or disguised coverages. At a foundational level it is not all that different from what Steve Spagnuolo likes to do with the Chiefs, just with less blitzing and a little more unpredictability.<\/p>\n

The Walker storyline adds an extra layer of intrigue, as the last time the Seattle defense allowed an opponent to rush for more than 100 yards was in Week 8 of the 2024 season, while Walker has run for 100 yards in six of his last eight games dating back to the 2025 postseason.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fascinating matchup, and as a fan I\u2019m excited to ee Macdonald and Reid face off against one another.<\/p>\n

5. The Seahawks are trying to end a two-game losing streak, while the Chiefs are 5-0 and bringing Kenneth Walker back to Seattle for the first time. What is your final score prediction for Sunday night\u2019s game?<\/p>\n

I think the Chiefs are going to win by double-digits and maybe actually win in a comfortable manner. The Kansas City defensThe Seahawks are a better team than their record, and if Sam Darnold hadn\u2019t been so preoccupied with throwing the ball to the other team over the past month, this would be a mega-hyped primetime game of undefeated teams. That, obviously, is not the case, but the two squads are more evenly matched than their records might lead one to believe. In primetime matchups between evenly matched teams, if there is a difference of two or more time zones between their home cities, the team whose home city is further West wins a disproportionate amount of the time.<\/p>\n

Seahawks 19, Chiefs 17e is also very good this year and if some of these other units can cause the Chargers to turn it over in their own territory multiple times as game, the Chiefs should have no problem doing it the same. It might be a big day for Harrison Butker as this defense still manages to hold teams to 3 over 7 most times, but put their backs to their own goal post enough and anyone would be able to break through for a few more scores than expected.<\/p>\n

I foresee the Chargers kicking a few field goals but failing to find the end zone even once. My score prediction for this one is 24-9 Kansas City with Justin Herbert once again turning it over more times than touchdown passes thrown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs face the Seattle Seahawks in a Sunday night lights of Week 7…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1036036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2081],"tags":[7,1480,1193,6,238,237,261,2635],"class_list":["post-1036035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-seattle-seahawks","tag-football","tag-kansas-city-chiefs-game-information","tag-kansas-city-chiefs-roster","tag-nfl","tag-seahawks","tag-seattle","tag-seattle-seahawks","tag-seattleseahawks"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117497348969672098","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1036035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1036036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1036035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1036035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1036035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}