Tag Archives: Klint Kubiak

Can The Seahawks Continue To Be Elite In Early Scoring?

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What has stood out to me more than anything through two preseason Seahawks games is the fact that the Seahawks scored first on both of their opening possessions (and both scores were touchdowns).

It’s so funny to me that the entirety of the Pete Carroll Era – especially with Russell Wilson at the helm – was the old adage of, “Can you win the game in the first quarter … and so on and so forth?” Those teams prided themselves on coming back and winning games late. It was an exciting brand of football, to be sure (if you avoided the weekly heart attacks this team tried to give you), and it’s hard to argue with results. I know we all would’ve preferred more, but a Super Bowl victory and two Super Bowl appearances speak for themselves.

When, in reality, it very much DOES matter how you do in the first quarter! Indeed, with every quarter containing the same number of minutes, it’s like EVERY quarter matters the same!

The 2025 Seahawks led the NFL in first quarter scoring, averaging 6.8 points (the Rams were second with 6.5 points; the Patriots were fourth with 6.1 points). Seems relevant, doesn’t it?

Did you also know that teams who lead after the first quarter go on to win nearly 70% of the time? Sure seems like all those Pete Carroll teams were doing things the hard way!

I can kind of see it the other way, if I talk through it a little bit. This presupposes you have an elite defense; it makes sense to slow the game down, reduce possessions, and then throw up the throttle late only if you need a score. But, it’s so much better to get that early lead, and then lean on your defense to force the other team into being one-dimensional. That’ll generate more stops, more turnovers, and run up the score for your team.

The 2025 Seahawks scored on their first possession four times (five if you count the playoffs); across the league, it’s anywhere from 35-40% of the time when teams score on their first possession, so that’s kind of in line. I will say the 49ers (since we got our OC from them) only scored on their first possession three times in 2025; something to think about.

The 2025 Seahawks led after the first quarter in only 12 of their 20 games (including playoffs), which is kind of surprising to me. I would’ve thought it might be higher, with the way people talk about how often we scored early. The only game where we led after the first quarter and lost was against the Bucs. It’s not entirely mandatory that we jump out early, but it certainly helps.

If we get even more granular – again, considering the Seahawks have scored on both of their preseason opening drives – I wanted to know the percentage of teams who win the game after scoring on their opening possession. Turns out, it’s around 60-65% of the time. And, if you defer, stop them, and THEN score on your opening possession, that percentage bumps up to around 70% (even higher if that score is a touchdown).

This whole thought exercise is a byproduct of my anxiety over Brian Fleury being a first-time play-caller. I’m trying my best to keep my confidence in how this whole operation is going to look with the loss of Kubiak, and taking solace in our ability to show up on these preseason opening drives is what I’ve got right now.

I say this knowing full well I’ve jinxed the Seahawks for tonight’s game against the Chiefs, but what are you gonna do?

Can the Seahawks continue this trend into the regular season? Will this be something that Fleury can hang his hat on?

The 49ers notoriously script their first however many plays. I don’t necessarily know how effective that is, since again, they only scored on their opening possession three times last year. But, it would stand to reason this is a strategy Fleury will take with him to Seattle.

I would love for the early scoring trend to continue for this team. I feel like it just brings this sense of relaxation over the proceedings, especially if you can crack the endzone early. It also buys you some wiggle room, in the event that the other team makes adjustments and you’re not necessarily as effective going forward. Get an early TD and a few field goals through three quarters, that’s 16 points and you’ve got a-whole-nother 15 minutes of action left to play! If this defense can’t keep you in the game with 16 points through three quarters, then I’ll eat my hat!

So, that’s what I’m going to be looking for tonight, and that’s what I’ll be looking for in the first month of the regular season. Can the Seahawks keep it up with first quarter scoring? If yes, that’s a great sign for things to come.

If not … then it’s one more thing we have to worry about.

The Seahawks Played A Preseason Game #2

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This week, we went all the way to Tennessee, to have a joint practice and play a football game. In the process, we lost Jake Bobo, Bud Clark, and Mason Richman for the season (or, at least, a significant portion of the season). And, oh yeah, we lost the game 19-16.

Look, I’m gonna be real with you, Jalen Milroe ain’t it. That guy fucking stinks, and in retrospect it’s idiotic that the Seahawks drafted him at all, let alone wasted a third round pick on him. Our whole deal – when we moved on from Grubb and hired Kubiak in 2025 – was the fact that we wanted to be this under-center, run the ball, play-action kind of offense. So, why draft a quarterback who can only play in shotgun? It’s completely idiotic! And, jeez, it’s a third round pick! There are valuable guys in that range! We could’ve saved the world from the Giants overvaluing Cam Skattebo!

Milroe was just God awful, once again. He played exclusively in the second half – so he got to avoid the bevy of starters the Titans ran out there – and finished 6/11 for 52 yards, 0 TDs, and 2 INTs. He also only ran it ONE time for 16 yard. I don’t know what to do with that information. The guy does one thing well – run fast – and he chooses to hardly ever do that one thing, in spite of the fact that the coaching staff has encouraged him, over and over, to keep doing that one thing. God fucking help us if the Seahawks need Milroe to play meaningful regular season minutes, because then you’ll know our year is really and truly shot.

On the flipside, really solid game from Drew Lock, who went 12/14 for 103 yards and a TD in the first half (again, against some actual starters for the Titans). He had one interception negated by a ticky-tack penalty, but other than that was rock solid. Elijah Arroyo looked great, catching 2 balls for 50 yards and a TD. And, Jacardia Wright ripped off a 69-yard TD en route to 8 carries for 81 yards on the day. Nice to see some legit running back depth on this team.

Again, the Seahawks sat their starters. Considering the mounting injuries listed above, I’m all for it. It was announced over the weekend that Jadarian Price likely will not see a snap of game action until the regular season starts, which is an interesting choice, but one that I can get behind when it comes to the running back position. Unfortunately, that means we’re really not going to see much of anything out of the rookie class for a while, which is looking dangerously like a total flop.

I thought the defense looked quite sturdy in this one throughout. Connor O’Toole had 1.5 sacks, and that more or less ends the list of names I’m willing to namecheck. The defense as a whole stopped the Titans on 2 out of 3 fourth down attempts, which is great.

This was a tough game to watch overall, because the refs called about a million penalties. Cue “it’s preseason for the officials too” line from everyone who talks about football.

Anyway, I’m not super concerned about the outcome, other than the fact that I would’ve had money on the Titans once again, if I would’ve went to the trouble of making an actual bet. We beat them 16-9 in the first half, which is kinda what matters in a game like this.

Friday is the preseason finale, then we can all move on with our lives.

Underrated Kenneth Walker Has Become Overrated

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If you want to make an argument against the 2026 Seahawks being any good, you just have to point to the losses of Klint Kubiak and Kenneth Walker, and all of a sudden a Super Bowl-winning team that lost only 3 games – that has gone on to retain the VAST majority of its players and coaches – is in danger of not even making the playoffs. Just ask Warren Sharp, the latest in a long line of humps who doesn’t watch the Seahawks and clearly doesn’t know all that much about the game of football.

Every year, people base their predictions on the comings and goings of offensive personnel in the NFL … and every year, wins and losses – and indeed, championships – are decided by the comings and goings of DEFENSE. Are we just going to sit here and forget that the Seahawks had the very best defense in 2025? That they’re returning just about everyone? And they have the very best defensive mind in all of football in Mike Macdonald as the man in charge?

But, no. Klint and Kenneth. Those are the guys. They meant EVERYTHING to that championship run. Even though Klint’s hire was largely met with a shrug and a yawn this time last year. And even though Kenneth was in a strict 50/50 timeshare with Charbonnet until the playoffs, and that’s only because Charbonnet got hurt. I guarantee, if Charbs was healthy, Walker wouldn’t have been Super Bowl MVP, and these idiots would have to conjure up some OTHER reason why the 2026 Seahawks are going to suck.

I don’t want to sit here and badmouth Kenneth Walker, because I generally like him. And, indeed, I thought he was one of the more talented and underrated running backs in the NFL the last four years. But, I understood why he was underrated; he couldn’t stay healthy, and he never really had a monster season. 1,050 yards rushing as a rookie was his season high.

The only reason anyone is talking about Walker at all is because of his playoff run: 313 yards in three games, a 4.8 yards per carry average, with 4 TDs, and another 104 yards receiving on 9 receptions (and, of course, that aforementioned Super Bowl MVP award). But, he’s had runs like this before! When he’s the #1 running back option – AND he’s healthy – he’s capable of greatness! It’s why I’ve held onto him for so long in fantasy football.

But, he’s frustrating because – until 2025 – he wouldn’t stay healthy for long. And, as a result, the Seahawks lost faith in him as a bellcow. Which ate into his snaps considerably, especially down around the goalline.

Look, if you want to question what the 2026 Seahawks are going to look like because of the change in offensive coordinator, be my guest. While everyone poo-poo’d the Kubiak hire, there’s no questioning his results. He got himself a head coaching gig after one season here; that’s impressive and speaks for itself!

But, don’t bring Kenneth Walker into this. As I mentioned on Formerly Twitter before, he was probably the 15th or 20th most important person to this team’s success in 2025.

As for Darnold, yeah, he had some problems with turnovers last year, but not when it mattered most. Even in the 4-INT game against the Rams, he still put us into a position to win it at the end.

I think the most galling thing Warren Sharp said was referencing Mike Macdonald’s defense as “competent”. Again, we’re talking about the NUMBER ONE defense in the NFL! And it’s not like last year was a fluke; this isn’t Macdonald’s first rodeo with having the #1 defense. I think he deserves a little more benefit of the doubt and a better word choice when it comes to a whole side of the ball that’s arguably the most important aspect to any championship-winning team.

Are The 2026 Seahawks Being Disrespected?

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I generally find it to be a funny argument when people talk about the Seahawks (or whatever team they root for) being disrespected, or ignored, by the national media/pundits. I used to care about these things, but then I grew up. It’s a childish thing to be up in arms about.

Now, I couldn’t tell you WHEN I stopped caring about this; I was probably a lot older than I care to admit. I’m sure you could dig through this blog and find instances of me bitching about this very topic, and I was pretty much in my 30’s when this thing started!

But, at some point, you just have to understand how the world works. There are certain teams that generate significantly more fan interest than other teams. That’s why not a day goes by when ESPN isn’t talking about the Dallas Cowboys, whereas weeks can go by without mention of the Seahawks!

Do you know why the Dallas Cowboys are a constant source of discourse? Because they were one of the biggest teams in the 70’s and 90’s, they have fans in every corner of the United States, and even though they haven’t won shit since those 90’s, they’re extremely dysfunctional, and therefore are fun to argue about. We can’t do anything about the Seahawks’ past; the Seahawks weren’t major players on the NFL landscape until the 2010’s, so we don’t have that kind of generational pull. But, aren’t you glad we’re NOT as dysfunctional as the Cowboys? Don’t you MUCH prefer rooting for a team that’s quietly excellent more often than not?

With the way people were talking about this “disrespect” of the Seahawks, I figured I would run into some laughable power rankings out on the Internet. But, the very first one I came upon – from ESPN – shows the Seahawks as steadily in the #1 slot. I’m not running into too many baffling examples; maybe I just don’t know where to look to find the major trolls.

If the Seahawks aren’t first, then they’re probably second or third at the worst, unless you’re just a psycho looking for free clicks. I know Vegas has the Seahawks pretty stout behind the Rams as far as Super Bowl Odds are concerned (+950 vs +800 for the Rams). It’s a little weird. I think those were right around the odds from the minute Super Bowl LX ended, which you rarely see.

But, we saw the Rams were every bit as good as the Seahawks throughout 2025. There were a small handful of plays that made the difference. And, make no mistake, if it was the Rams in the Super Bowl against New England, we would’ve watched Matthew Stafford & Co. lifting the Lombardi Trophy.

And, you could certainly argue the Rams have improved their squad more than the Seahawks improved themselves. They have a revamped secondary, with Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson signing big money deals. They also retained their own safety, Kam Curl, who makes a big impact for them. I’m not blown away by their draft, but they have a couple guys who could potentially help right away. And finally, they didn’t really lose anyone of import. Three of their corners are gone, but they were all pretty mediocre anyway. Tutu Atwell has always been a nothing-burger. One of their offensive linemen retired, but he was hurt for the back-half of the season anyway, and they managed that just fine. Maybe more than anything, they’ve gained this huge chip on their shoulder because they feel like it should’ve been them in the Super Bowl; it’s an edge you can’t quantify, but as they always say, it’s better to be the hunter than the hunted.

The flipside to the argument is that the Seahawks have done an excellent job at maintaining a high talent level throughout their roster. Yes, we lost major players like Walker, Bryant, Mafe, and Woolen. But, we retained the players who matter – JSN, Shaheed, Jobe, Drake Thomas – and we’ve supplemented through the draft with Price, Clark, Neal, and Stephens. For that matter, Fowler is the final piece to the puzzle, as a quality veteran edge player.

The only major question is offensive coordinator. The Rams retained both of their coordinators, but we had to replace Klint Kubiak. That’s undeniably rough. But, we just gotta hope that the growing pains are minimal, and count on the defense being good enough to carry us through the early part of the season.

I gotta say, if I was some random slob, not a fan of either team, I’d probably put my money on the Rams to win it all. So, in that sense, I don’t see it as Seahawks disrespect at all. The biggest argument against the Seahawks repeating as champions is the fact that it’s so hard for ANYONE to repeat as champions. In that sense, you might see some good value in making a Seahawks bet. Maybe they slip in the odds. Maybe – if they start slow – you could jump on the Seahawks about a month in and get some tremendous value!

My take, for the longest time, has been: I don’t WANT people talking about my team. Talk about the Cowboys. Fawn all over the Rams. Call us maybe the third-best team in our division. That’s my life force! Give US that chip on our shoulders! And let’s go back to work, shocking the world and proving the doubters wrong again at every turn.

The Seahawks’ Offensive Line Did Everything I Asked Of Them In 2025

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After years and years and years and YEARS of mediocre-to-outright-terrible play, the Seahawks finally managed to improve their offensive line in 2025.

I don’t want to go back and rehash every single O-Line of the last decade; we’ve been here. We’ve seen how this unit has underperformed. Every year, it was the same complaints; every year, it was the same desperate plea.

The complaints: too many quick pressures allowed, not able to run block when we needed it most.

The plea: just be AVERAGE. Just be middle-of-the-pack! With everything else on the team set up pretty well, just an adequate O-Line would do wonders for our overall win/loss record.

And, depending on where you look, the Seahawks did us one better in 2025. In some metrics, we were BETTER than average! If nothing else, we were among the biggest gainers across the league from 2024 to 2025. It’s something I’ve harped upon for I don’t know how long now. Seemingly every other team with bad line play was able to see immediate improvement from one year to the next, except the Seahawks. Until now, anyway.

So, what was the magic cure? The line from 2024 to 2025 was fairly similar, though I will say injuries more or less ravaged this unit in 2024; in 2025, they were largely healthy. But, from year to year, you’re looking at Cross, youngish center, Bradford, and Lucas, as our primary starters.

Was Grey Zabel the key? Was it the coaching staff? Was it the scheme? Was it a non-Geno Smith/Russell Wilson quarterback, who was actually able to play from under center? Was it continuity of having the same five guys (for the most part) week-in and week-out?

I will never underestimate the importance of simply not handing over a starting job to a retread veteran. Laken Tomlinson, Connor Williams, Evan Brown, Austin Blythe, Gabe Jackson, I could go on and on. Every year, we brought in some Band Aid to cover up a massive hole in our line, and every year we were a dumpster fire.

Replacing that left guard spot with a bona fide first round talent paid immediate dividends, and figures to help exponentially in the long term as well. Zabel wasn’t an All Pro in year one, but he was certainly an improvement, and given his talent and desire to be great, I have all the confidence in the world that he will be rated among the best in the game in no time!

You can pinpoint the beginning of this turnaround back in 2022, with the drafting of Charles Cross and Abe Lucas. Cross has been a quiet rock at left tackle, and Lucas has been a steal when he’s healthy. Credit where it’s due, the Seahawks made the right calls on both spots, and signed them to second contracts before their costs got out of control. But, it shouldn’t have taken this long to finally put it all together.

Which leads me to – if I had to rank them – the top reason for this level of play: bringing in the right coaches. This isn’t a simple matter of finding an offensive line coach to teach the guys proper technique. But, it’s more the scheme. If there was one general push-back to the complaint about the Seahawks’ O-Line struggles, it was the fact that our offense was constantly in shotgun.

As a quick aside, I know the reason: Geno Smith and Russell Wilson were both more comfortable in shotgun. We were also – not for nothing – in shotgun a lot back when this team was good (in the 2012-2015 range), but those teams had the benefit of Marshawn Lynch, and a quarterback who was still willing to run with the football on occasion. There’s also something to be said for John Schneider’s oft-repeated complaint that college football wasn’t properly training these linemen for the pro game. So, maybe we schemed up a lot of shotgun plays because that’s what these linemen did so often in college.

Anyway, if you heard from a former lineman in interviews talking about the Seahawks’ struggles, they’d call for the team to go back under center, so the linemen could fire off the ball and go hit some fools. Well, that clearly wasn’t Ryan Grubb’s style, nor was it that of Shane Waldron before him. If you want one reason above all else for why Kubiak is now the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, what he did for our offensive line could arguably be the best thing he’s ever done in his career!

As it is with everything, you can’t really point to any one thing as the reason for all this change. Maybe we underestimated the importance of having a healthy Abe Lucas for 17+ games. Maybe we overestimated the talent level of someone like Damien Lewis (who has been … fine, since signing that big money deal with the Panthers, but clearly isn’t what Grey Zabel already is, or is going to be).

It’s funny what comes back to you, once you sit with your thoughts on something like this. Remember what the Seahawks used to have to do to mitigate a particularly ferocious pass rush? Which, when you compare it to our O-Line, is like ALL other pass rushes, but that’s neither here nor there. We’d have to max protect, or we’d have to make a concerted effort to get the ball out as quickly as possible. And even then, teams would still sack us 40-50 times a year!

Sam Darnold came into this season after taking 48 regular season sacks in Minnesota (plus, like, 9 or whatever in their playoff loss). And that was an otherwise good year for Darnold! So, you’ll forgive me and most other Seahawks fans, if we didn’t have the highest hopes for this O-Line and their ability to keep Darnold off his back. Yet, he cut those sack numbers to 27 in the regular season, and 6 in three playoff games.

Now, I know what you’ll say: the decrease in sacks came with an increase in turnovers. Yeah, but not by as much as you’d think. He had 12 picks in 2024 and 14 in 2025; he had 8 fumbles in 2024 and 11 in 2025. But, he had zero turnovers in the 2025 playoffs, and cut his turnovers quite a bit as the season went on.

And I didn’t notice the Seahawks going max protect very often. Nor did I notice this year’s team resorting to the quick pass. In prior years, it was OBVIOUS; this year, I’m sure it happened on occasion, but it never seemed like a significant part of the gameplan.

The bugaboo in 2025, of course, was Anthony Bradford. I read on Field Gulls that we shouldn’t be shocked to see the Seahawks run this line back in totality in 2026, including Bradford starting at right guard again. Maybe the Seahawks take a flier on a later-round guard to come in and compete. But, odds are they’re not going to use a first rounder two years in a row. Fair. There’s probably better value elsewhere.

The fact of the matter is, you can probably put up a lowlight tape of Anthony Bradford whiffing on blocks each and every week. But, we’re not necessarily seeing any focused highlight tapes that are probably available to anyone who wants to put in the work. I would also say that having just one weak link on an O-Line is a good problem to have, especially if that’s your team’s only real weakness across the board. And, as Zabel continues to improve, that gives us more opportunities to utilize the center spot to double-team that side of the ball on 4-man rushes.

At this point, I don’t expect to see much in the way of improvement out of Bradford. He might be able to refine his technique, and use his expertise to avoid as many bungling errors. But, he’s always going to have plays here and there where he fucks up or gets beat. That’s just who he is. He’ll probably only be here for one more season, and then he’ll be gone. Replaced by whoever we bring in to be the next in a long line of weak links at right guard.

As long as everyone else is doing their jobs, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

The Seahawks Hired A New Offensive Coordinator

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Something tells me Brian Fleury won’t be promoted to somebody’s head coach after one season.

Being Super Bowl Champs comes with certain challenges: other teams want to copy your success. It’s a good problem to have, of course, because you’ve got that Lombardi Trophy in your back pocket. Would I trade a Super Bowl championship to get Klint Kubiak back? No way!

So, we’ve been spending the better part of this week looking for his replacement, and it sounds like Brian Fleury is the guy. Tight Ends Coach and Run Game Coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers. It’s hard to get it up for a guy who’s never called offensive plays, coming over from a team that scored all of 26 points in three games against us in 2025.

I guess the idea is that we’re hiring a piece of Kyle Shanahan, who – against non-Mike Macdonald-coached teams – actually has a pretty good offensive scheme, that is also very similar to the one Kubiak runs. If they can’t beat you, join ’em? Did I get that saying right?

I guess I’m a little nervous about hiring someone with no previous play-calling experience; call it the Shane Waldron of it all. But, I mean, new offensive coordinators have to get their shot somewhere, right? They’re not ALL retreads!

The thing that concerns me is that there’s an obvious learning curve in the NFL, whether you’re drafted from college as a player, or going from being a coordinator to a head coach, or going from a position coach to coordinator. Now, we got lucky with Macdonald; he’s one of the good ones who’s been good from the jump. But, how long does it take a mortal man to make the jump to calling an offense? Is 2026 destined to be a lost year? Or can he pick it up on the fly and get this unit humming by season’s end? I’m guessing we’ll need to ride our defense to success once again, until the offense can start pulling its weight.

I found it very interesting that the Seahawks seemed destined to hire from within, in order to maintain offensive scheme continuity; we even went so far as to interview three or four of our own guys! Then this curveball came, and all of a sudden Fleury is the choice. What does that mean for the rest of the staff? Who’s going to jump ship to Vegas and join Kubiak? Who might stay, but be resentful that he didn’t get the job? Who will get a token promotion to be kept happy? A lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta whathaveyou’s.

What’s been encouraging are the moves the Seahawks have made on the defensive coaching staff this week. It looks like we officially retained Karl Scott, our Defensive Backs Coach/Pass Game Specialist, who appears to be destined for bigger things in the future. Aden Durde, of course, is back as our non-play calling DC; I understand it’ll only be a matter of time before he’s seriously considered for a head coaching job somewhere. And, in a move to maybe have a DC-in-waiting, we hired Zach Orr – the guy who took over for Macdonald in Baltimore, before they cleaned house this offseason – to be our Inside Linebackers Coach. That was, not for nothing, the job he had under Macdonald when he was DC in Baltimore. I mean, if the guy is good enough to be promoted to DC by a quality organization like that, he must be pretty good at his job! What a great get for Macdonald!

Here’s the deal, so much of 2025 was kind of a freak of nature, all the way down to our offense being so good, it got our OC hired to be a head coach in the NFL (after everyone killed us for hiring him in the first place). Considering DEFENSE is the backbone of this team, that feels … unnatural. I would expect – heading into 2026 – many of our defensive coaches to be on whatever is the opposite of a Hot Seat. They’re going to be pegged for future promotions. So, it’s good to see Macdonald doing what he can to bring in as much coaching talent as possible to back-fill.

Again, these are all good problems to have! McVay has to go through this every fucking year, and the Rams don’t really miss a beat, do they? So, I’m not going to be totally doom & gloom about all of this. But, I’m also not going to be super excited either. Fleury looks like he should be chainsmoking in a British pub while brooding over his favorite Futbol Club. He could be fine, he could be shit; we won’t know until the regular season games start.

Seahawks Super Bowl Week Distractions

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When you’re a Super Bowl participant, you’re in the limelight for two solid weeks. That’s just the way it goes. Weak-willed motherfuckers from a superstitious perspective might not like it – preferring to keep skating under the radar – but it comes with the territory. Even the most boring team like the Seahawks – from a national perspective – will have some skeletons uncovered. Some old wounds poked at.

For the record, I think the Seahawks have done an AMAZING job at staying out of the national spotlight this season. It wasn’t until after we beat the Rams on Thursday Night Football when the rest of the world took notice. And even then, there were bigger fish to fry. Bigger storylines.

Not for nothing, but I also LOVE how many people hate the fact that the Seahawks are here. There’s people actively condemning the Rams for losing and bringing us to this fate! Just inject it into my motherfucking veins. I want your hate! I want your apathy! I want this to be the lowest-rated Super Bowl in years!

In spite of it all, though, you can’t avoid the distractions. The worst-case scenario is obviously Eugene Robinson getting arrested for soliciting a prostitute the night before the Falcons’ first Super Bowl, against the Broncos. What a disaster! Someone make sure Coby Bryant is in bed at a reasonable hour!

I don’t remember a lot happening before the prior Seahawks Super Bowls; maybe the worst thing was Jerramy Stevens giving the Steelers bulletin board material (that would bite us in the ass) in XL. There was the cheeky fun of Marshawn Lynch on Media Day, giving endless non-answers so he wouldn’t get fined. But, nothing too crazy.

This year, there’s actual news!

The first big announcement/leak was that the Seahawks were going to be put on the market after the Super Bowl. I will, obviously, have a lot more to say about this as the weeks and months unfold, but suffice it to say I’m concerned. I think this can only mean disaster for the future of the Seattle Seahawks, with very little chance for upside.

It’s funny to me that there are rumors going around that the Patriots and Robert Kraft leaked this information. I mean, it’s kinda plausible, right? He would be privy to that kind of information, his team is in the Super Bowl, he was recently unearthed in a certain pedophile’s emails, why not try to shoo some attention Seattle’s way and off of him?

What kind of annoys me is how the other owners are essentially trying to push Jody Allen out the door. I mean, I get it, Paul Allen put it in his will that he wants his assets sold off and donated. You gotta respect the man’s wishes. But, what’s the rush?! I get the vibe that the Allen’s haven’t been very welcome among the other NFL owners; maybe they’re not scummy enough. Who knows? But, that’s out there as something hanging over all of our heads. I don’t know if it’s necessarily a distraction for the players; really just hurts the fans, if I’m being honest.

The other big leak was Klint Kubiak being all-but-hired by the Las Vegas Raiders to be their new head coach.

Is anybody getting sneaky Kyle Shanahan vibes? Remember, he was the OC for the Falcons in that 28-3 Super Bowl with the Patriots. Then, he was hired the next day to be the head coach of the 49ers. Let’s hope our Super Bowl ends with a victory for the outgoing OC!

This is obviously bad news, but not necessarily unexpected. I think a lot of people doubted Kubiak’s readiness to be hired as a head coach as we approached these playoffs. But, I mean, there were a whopping 10 openings this cycle, and only so many competent retreads to go around. There’s always a sizable contingent of teams looking to one of the best available offensive coordinators as the cure for what ails their franchise.

I don’t know if Kubiak is ready to be a head coach, but then again, I don’t know if I was all that enamored with him when the Seahawks originally hired him to be the OC. If memory serves, I thought he was fine, but nothing special. I left room for hope, but I definitely didn’t expect a season like this!

The thing is: he has name recognition, and he has a proven offensive system. That’s big. That’s probably like 80% of why he was hired by the Raiders, with everything else boiling down to his interview and whatever other intangibles there are that we’re not privy to. In that sense, Kubiak is sort of a no-brainer. Sure, every OC who’s worth his weight in salt bases his system on some sort of proven way to move the football in the NFL. But, not many are the son of a guy credited as either the creator or co-creator of an offensive scheme that took the NFL by storm 30 years ago.

On the distraction scale, this is probably like a 6 or 7 out of 10. It’s not on the level of Lane Kiffin leaving Ole Miss during their playoff run; that’s like a 10/10. But, it’s not great! I have to imagine the players – like the fans – figured they had more than one season with Kubiak at the helm. I wouldn’t think this will creep into THIS particular game, but you never know. Do people start second-guessing his decisions, knowing that he’s not going to be around to endure the consequences if we lose? Does he try too hard and outsmart himself in his play-calling, in an attempt to make his stock look even better? Does he go more conservative, worrying that a bad outcome might cost him his promotion?

I’m not saying these are likely scenarios. I’m guessing nothing will change. Kubiak will stick with what got him here and let this offense do what it does best. But, these are the kinds of variables you obsess about when your team’s in the Super Bowl and you’re on your second week of analyzing this damn thing!

Of course, the distractions couldn’t end there. Coming in just under the wire, we have Nick Emmanwori’s ankle injury in practice yesterday. Is it a minor-enough, low-ankle injury where rest and wrapping will allow him to play on Sunday? Or, did we just lose our dynamic, do-everything rookie before the biggest game of the year? I don’t normally like ending posts on a cliffhanger, but this thing’s gotta go up!

What’s At Stake For The Seahawks In This Super Bowl?

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It’s funny, the closer you get to a major goal, the more that you want it. Before the season started, the Super Bowl wasn’t anywhere near my radar, so it wasn’t even a concern. Then, as the season went along, and the Seahawks started winning more games, this itch in the back of my brain started getting scratched, but I wouldn’t let myself get my hopes up too high. As we started beating teams in our division, until we ultimately won the NFC West and the #1 seed, the Super Bowl materialized squarely in my sights. And now that we’re there? Shit, I’m a salivating dog yanking on his leash, trying with all my might to see this through to the finish line!

But, of course, it’s not up to me. I’m just a passive observer.

I don’t know if I would be able to handle a Seahawks loss here. It’s hard to say where this would rank on the heartbreak scale, because it hasn’t happened. The first Super Bowl in the 2005 season was obviously tough to recover from, because it felt like it was stolen from our grasp. But, we went into that game as 4-point underdogs; we weren’t supposed to win that one, which is why I was so cocky going into it (because it felt like there was nothing to lose). And even though you can still come away from a game like that feeling good about the future, you still know how hard it is to get there. It was almost 30 years before the Seahawks made it! What if it never happened again in my lifetime?!

Then, we went into Super Bowl XLVIII as underdogs to the Broncos (around 3 points), which is exactly where you want to be as a team. That’s the sweet spot. On top of which, nearly everyone was predicting a Denver victory for the #1 offense in football. That was the greatest sports day of my life.

Super Bowl XLIX started out with the Seahawks favored by 2.5, before a wave of Patriots bets flipped it to New England by 1, before hovering right around a pick ’em at gametime. This kind of felt like the previous Super Bowl, like everyone was picking the best offense over the best defense. I wouldn’t say predictions were quite as one-sided, but there was a lot of Patriots heat. Of course, the heartbreak scale on this game can’t be topped. Instead of this game feeling like it was stolen, it felt like we just gave it away, in the dumbest, most shocking way possible. And that Seahawks team, that potential dynasty, never did recover.

Now, we’re here, Super Bowl LX, as pretty steady 4.5 favorites in a rematch against the Pats. There’s endless talk about how the last one ended; the pre-game show is going to be a real test of all of our patience. I would say on the one hand, this is a terrible position to be in, because EVERYONE is picking the Seahawks to win and cover. On the other hand, though, that must be for a reason: we’re really fucking good. Maybe we’re all underrating the Patriots too much and it will bite us in the ass! Over 2/3 of the money and bets are on the Seahawks to cover; that’s dangerous.

It’s hard not to be overconfident, though. I want to say I had a healthy fear of the Pats in XLIX – with the Tom Brady/Bill Belichick/Gronk of it all – but I also had a healthy confidence in the Seahawks finding a way to prevail. This time? It’s bordering on a sure thing. I’m looking at alternate spreads, I’m getting ready to talk about dynasty again, it’s a whole thing. This is the perfect way to fall flat on my face, and really suffer a crushing blow to my psyche.

So, that’s at stake. Also, a loss would drop us to a heartbreaking 1-3 in the big game. There’s only two teams that have made it four times and have a worse record: the 0-4 Bills of the 1990s and the 0-4 Vikings of the 1970s. 2-2 on the other hand is downright respectable! It sets us up wonderfully for whenever we make it back a fifth time. And, if we can go on a little run over the next decade, who knows?

This would also drop the Pats to 6-6 in Super Bowls, which would be a favor to pretty much the rest of the world outside of New England. I mean, they still get to say they’ve been in 12 Super Bowls, but a little bit of the bloom comes off the rose when you’re .500. Plus, we can still say that outside of Tom Brady, they haven’t won shit.

Also at stake: it looks like we’re going to lose our offensive coordinator to the Raiders as their head coach. That means we’re one & done at OC and will need to replace a crucial element of our coaching staff (maybe even our O-Line coach, since they seem to be joined at the hip) after most of the other teams have already hired all the best available coordinators. So, we might need to relish this championship for a while, because who knows how long it will take to either break in the new guy, or find his replacement if he flames out?

And then there’s the rematch of it all. This won’t make up for losing XLIX, but the pain will be compounded if New England is some sort of Super Bowl kryptonite for us. We’re never going to have a better opportunity than this. It’s as big of a mismatch as we’ve seen in a while.

The last time there was a spread higher than 4.5 was in 2010. You just don’t see those crazy spreads anymore for the Super Bowl. With parity being what it is, usually the best teams from each conference end up making it a closer spread. A 4.5 today is like a 7.5 in the 90’s.

For the Seahawks to lose this game, weird shit would have to happen. Turnovers galore, special teams SNAFUs, clock mismanagement. I don’t want to know what it would take for the Seahawks to blow this game, because it would be too enraging.

Let’s just have a clean, dominant XLVIII type outcome. It won’t be good for the viewing experience, but it’ll be amazing for my sanity!

Would The 2025 Seahawks Beat The 2013 Seahawks?

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I love having these kinds of debates, because everyone has a strong opinion, yet there’s really no way to be correct. Either side has a case.

This particular question came up because the latest All Time DVOA Rankings came out, which includes the Seahawks’ playoff run to date. With their victory over the Rams in the NFC Championship Game, the 2025 Seahawks are officially the 6th best team of all time in DVOA; the five teams ahead of us are as follows:

  1. 1991 Washington Redskins
  2. 1985 Chicago Bears
  3. 2007 New England Patriots
  4. 1989 San Francisco 49ers
  5. 1996 Green Bay Packers

For starters, it’ll always be wild to me that that ’91 Redskins team is the G.O.A.T. The ’85 Bears make sense. The ’07 Pats – undefeated until the Super Bowl – make sense. Even the ’89 49ers make sense, because you had to figure one of those Joe Montana teams would be on the list. The ’96 Packers? Okay, I’ll buy that for a dollar; Brett Favre, Reggie White, and so on. Then, there’s this year’s Seahawks, followed by the ’23 Ravens (Mike Macdonald as DC), ’92 Cowboys (part of the dynasty, naturally), the ’10 Pats (didn’t they also lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl?) and the ’04 Pats (also part of that initial dynasty).

Anyway, good group, right? Where do the 2013 Seahawks rank, you might ask? They’re all the way down at #15 all time. Still very good, of course! But, when you factor in how – if the 2025 Seahawks win the Super Bowl on Sunday – this team should at least crack the Top 5 and maybe even the Top 4 in all time DVOA, that’s quite a jump over the 2013 squad.

So, open and shut, right? The 2025 Seahawks beat the 2013 Seahawks. Next case!

But, does anyone actually believe that? By that, I mean, does any tried & true Seahawks fan actually believe that this 2025 team is better than the peak L.O.B. team? Let’s even say that this team kills the Patriots as bad or worse than that team killed the Broncos in XLVIII.

I gotta tell you, I think I’m with Team 2013.

Before we get into a positional breakdown, let me say this: I think the coaching staff in 2025 is better than the staff in 2013. I think Mike Macdonald is a budding football genius. I think his scheme – from a technical standpoint – is way better than the Cover 3 Whatever Pete Carroll had for the L.O.B. I think the only reason why those defenses were as dominant as they were is because they had so many Hall of Famers, All Pros, and Pro Bowlers at their disposal; but, that group could’ve made ANY scheme work! For me, the proof is in the pudding as that team aged, and as the talent was broken apart by guys leaving, and incoming players not being as good. The Cover 3 was figured out pretty much by 2015, and the right team could march the ball down the field on us at will; as evidenced by every first and second round exit from 2015 until the end of Pete Carroll’s time here.

But, if you put those L.O.B. players in this Mike Macdonald system? I mean, we might be blowing all time scoring and yardage allowed records out of the water!

I think you have to give the secondary advantage to the L.O.B. Everyone’s lazy take about Emmanwori is that he’s The Next Kam Chancellor; well, the L.O.B. had the original, who is still unmatched! They also had Earl Thomas and Richard Sherman, better than anyone in this secondary and it’s not particularly close. This doesn’t even feel like a legitimate argument.

I am also taking Bobby Wagner, K.J. Wright, and Malcolm Smith over Ernest Jones & Co. Sorry dudes, but Bobby is a Hall of Famer, K.J. is a future Ring of Honor guy, and Malcolm was the freaking Super Bowl MVP, who also came down with The Tip to get us there!

The defensive line … there’s a debate to be had. 2013 had Michael Bennett, Cliff Avril, Brandon Mebane, Red Bryant, Tony McDaniel, Clinton McDonald, Chris Clemons, and Bruce Irvin; the 2025 line has Leonard Williams, Jarran Reed, Byron Murphy, DeMarcus Lawrence, Uchenna Nwosu, Boye Mafe, and Derick Hall. To me, it’s kind of a wash, but if I had to pick one over the other, I would probably take 2025, just because there’s a bit more depth and more pass rushing options. Feels like a deeper, fresher rotation. But, it’s very close.

Now, let’s flip to the offense.

Give me the 2013 O-Line over the 2025 O-Line. While I like both a lot, Anthony Bradford is still much more of a liability than anyone on the 2013 line, so I don’t think there’s a lot to argue about here.

The receivers are an interesting debate. Obviously, JSN is the best out of either group. But, the 2013 team is MUCH deeper. Golden Tate, Doug Baldwin, Jermaine Kearse, Percy Harvin (in the Super Bowl). Extend it to tight ends, 2013 had Zach Miller and Luke Willson. As much as I like Shaheed, Kupp, and Barner, I think I’m giving the edge to 2013.

The running game is no contest. Beastmode and Russell Wilson over KWIII and Charbonnet.

The most fun argument is when you get down to the quarterbacks. Russell Wilson vs. Sam Darnold. Now, again, for the sake of this argument, we have to assume the 2025 Seahawks are going to win this Super Bowl. Because if they LOSE, I’m throwing everything out the window. I’m sorry, but you just can’t be considered one of the all-time greatest teams if you don’t win a championship, especially in a year where you’re favored by so many points and it’s totally yours for the taking.

This is really tough! 2013 Russell Wilson was in his second season in the league. So, he wasn’t quite the passer he would morph into over the ensuing years. He was a 63% completion guy, for 3,357 yards, 26 TDs, 9 INTs, and a 101.2 rating. While it may feel like this is only Sam Darnold’s second full season, he’s clearly so much more of a completed product than that incarnation of Wilson. He’s at an almost 68% completion rate, for 4,048 yards, 25 TDs, 14 INTs, and a 99.2 rating. Obviously, with Wilson, you have to factor in his legs; he had 539 rushing yards on 96 attempts; Darnold had 95 yards on 35 attempts. That evens things out a bit more in the total yardage category.

My mind is having a hard time figuring out what to focus on in this debate. In a vacuum, 2013 Russell Wilson was younger, faster, and more explosive, both as a runner and as a passer. He also had the added advantage of the league not really being ready for him and his style of play. It’s hard to discount everything that’s happened since. You see Russell Wilson today and you think he looks the same. But, obviously, he’s slower, and completely ineffective. It can be hard to remember how amazing he was!

That being said, if we’re talking about a specific game between the 2013 Seahawks and the 2025 Seahawks, then you have to figure Mike Macdonald is going to have a wealth of knowledge on how to stop 2013 Russell Wilson and that Seahawks offense. But … can you really stop Marshawn Lynch? Can you really stop Russell Wilson when he’s escaping the pocket and guys like Baldwin and Tate are making plays down field? Eventually, they’re going to bust through.

This brings me to the offensive schemes and play-calling. Darrell Bevell vs. Klint Kubiak. Have to give the edge to 2025, again. And this is where I think Super Bowl LX will be very instructive. Can Kubiak – and can Sam Darnold – keep this offense humming for one more game? He’s pulling all the right strings, though. Kubiak has the plays to neutralize an aggressive front. Sam Darnold – at his best – can slice and dice the short and intermediate area (which is what you have to do to beat the 2013 Seahawks).

So, let’s talk about Sam Darnold. Here’s the thing that scares me: would the L.O.B. make him their red-headed stepchild? I can hear it now: Richard Sherman, mic’d up, just abusing Darnold for four quarters. Clowning on him. Jumping routes and knocking balls away while talking an avalanche of shit. And, even if Darnold does hit Walker on a screen pass, or Barner on a button hook, there’s K.J. and Bobby, pouncing, giving little-to-no yards after catch. There’s Cooper Kupp on a crosser, getting destroyed by Kam.

It wasn’t just talent with the L.O.B. It was intimidation. Intimidation in an era where they were starting to become hyper-aware of hits to the head and unnecessary roughness.

Given his mobility, I’m giving a slight edge to Russell Wilson. I also think – at that time – he was a little more careful with the ball and avoiding turnovers. The 2025 defense isn’t AS obsessed with avoiding deep shots down field, so it’s conceivable that Wilson could connect on a couple moon balls, or find someone wide open on a broken play.

In an Any Given Sunday sort of way, yeah, either team has a chance to win. But, if you played this as a hypothetical series of 10 games, I think the 2013 Seahawks win 7 out of 10. Even if I had to bet my life on one team in one game, give me 2013. And again, it boils down to turnovers. Darnold is much more prone to giving the ball away, especially to a team like that. I’ll take my chances riding the rollercoaster with Russ. It may be close early. Hell, the 2025 team might even be up after three quarters. But, I’ll take the 2013 Seahawks in their element: winning in the fourth quarter. This’ll also be a weird kind of 26-18 game. Great defense, probably a lot of field goals, and once again the L.O.B. comes out on top in a one-score game.

How Wrong Was I About The 2025 Seattle Seahawks?

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It’s fun to go back and read my predictions posts. Sometimes, I make good points; sometimes, I’m completely full of shit. Fun! We’re having a good time.

Just before the season started, I wrote this. TL;DR: I had the Seahawks going 10-7, second place in the NFC West, 6th seed in the NFC, losing in the Wild Card round to the San Francisco 49ers. Officially, I had the Rams in fourth place in the division, so CLEARLY I was smoking crack. Maybe I drank too much of that “Matthew Stafford Has An Injured Back” Kool Aid.

Within that post, I posed a number of questions, that I feel have received robust answers in the ensuing 4+ months. Can Sam Darnold win a big game? Absolutely! Is there a deep threat? Well, the trade for Shaheed solved that. Is Cooper Kupp cooked? Nope! When will Kenneth Walker get injured? Still waiting! Can Tory Horton hold up for a full season? Well, you can’t win ’em all.

Do we have enough depth at linebacker? With the emergence of Drake Thomas, sure seems like it. There isn’t one elite pass rusher … but three guys had 7 sacks and one guy had 6 (ten guys had at least 2); seemed to work out okay, as our team was tied for 7th in the league. I can go on and on, but most of these questions were answered in the positive.

What’s really interesting is the Klint Kubiak discourse heading into the season. I think a lot of the brainier football fans were underwhelmed with the hire. They saw it as a step-back. Someone who is going to just pound the rock. Someone whose scheme isn’t as effective when you’re playing from behind. And, are we really talking about a couple of coaches and a rookie left guard being enough to lift up what has been a horrid offensive line for ages?

Now, we’re talking about a guy who might be a frontrunner for a head coaching job after his first year in Seattle! If he’s not hired by one of the remaining open teams, Kubiak CERTAINLY will be poached after the 2026 season! As they say, I didn’t have that one on my bingo card.

It turns out, Kubiak’s system works. We saw it in the first couple weeks in New Orleans in 2024 (before injuries riddled that offense), and we’ve seen it throughout 2025. Indeed, a couple of coaches and a rookie left guard WERE enough to turn around this O-Line, into one of the best in football! And, while there weren’t a ton of opportunities to have to come from behind this year, just look at the two wins over the Rams, and the last-second victory over the Colts. Hell, even our losses were close, and largely weren’t Kubiak’s fault.

Yes, the Seahawks run the ball a lot, but they have the personnel to do it. And, even though it might have held them back early in the season, the Seahawks stuck with it and turned it into a machine by season’s end. Regardless, Darnold was up to the task in the passing game, and when you have the best defense in the football (whenever you’re NOT going up against the Rams), you don’t actually need to come from behind all that often! Imagine that, playing with a lead instead of always trying to manufacture a late score to win it; I didn’t even know that was possible!

The bottom line with the 2025 Seahawks is that this was the best-case scenario season. That’s not to say we weren’t good. Hell, with the way things shook out, we’re probably the best team in the league! But, you don’t get to 14 regular season wins, a #1 seed, and two playoff victories against two tough divisional foes without some breaks.

Normally, when I write my pre-season preview, I’ll delve into a couple of scenarios: if it all breaks right, and if it all breaks wrong. A ceiling and a floor. Then, ultimately, I’ll pick a spot somewhere in the middle and call it a prediction. I remember doing this a lot during the post-Super Bowl era of Pete Carroll’s tenure here. We still had Russell Wilson, we still had Bobby Wagner, we still had a number of good players around them. But, those were flawed teams, and instead of just saying that, I’d get into the best-case/worst-case of it all. In various best-case scenarios, you could make an argument for any of those Seahawks teams from 2015-2021 going to the Super Bowl. If EVERYTHING broke right, if Russell Wilson played out of his mind, if a number of guys came from out of nowhere to have big years, if we had injury luck, if, if, if. You write something like that because it’s a fantasy. It’s not actually going to happen. But, you put it out there into the universe, because you hope there’s still some good in this world. You hope your instincts are wrong, and this team has what it takes to shock everyone.

The 2025 Seahawks feel like that fantasy coming true. Not because we’re in the Super Bowl. Those 2013 and 2014 seasons weren’t fantasies; they were dominant football teams, with high expectations, and they made good (for the most part). It’s not just MY expectations; honestly, I thought I was pretty fair. I was always on board with Geno and D.K. getting traded away. I at the very least saw Darnold as a younger, cheaper version of Geno, with more upside. At least I predicted the Seahawks would make the playoffs! How many national pundits had the Seahawks as a last place team? How many people killed us for those trades, for the Darnold and Kubiak signings, for an underwhelming draft and a huge whiff in free agency?

But, I can’t sit here and tell you I had any inkling whatsoever that the Seahawks would make the Super Bowl. I don’t even know what the odds were before the season, but I thought I saw somewhere that they were 60 to 1?!

Look through the prior Super Bowl winners, what do you see? The Eagles, Mahomes, the Rams, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning. That’s just between now and the last time the Seahawks won it all. All of those teams were highly-regarded heading into their respective seasons. When’s the last time you saw a team come from so far out of left field? Maybe those Giants teams who took down the Pats? Maybe the very first Pats team that beat the Rams way back when? Maybe you have to go all the way back to the 1999 season, when Trent Green of the St. Louis Rams got hurt in the pre-season and an unknown Kurt Warner took over and led them all the way to the Promised Land. That’s pretty far out of left field!

This is a once-in-a-generation type of event, though! If the Seahawks can make good on this trip to the Super Bowl, it’ll be one of the biggest surprises from a beginning of a season of all time.

I’ll tell you what, I’ve never been happier to be so wrong. Even after the season started, I was going through the motions. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. We started out 0-1; that felt like a really bad sign! We were 3-2 after five games. A soft schedule propped us up to 7-2, but then that disaster down in L.A. proved to me without a shadow of a doubt that this Seahawks team wasn’t it. Then, the soft schedule allowed us to win some more. 11-3 heading into that Thursday Night showdown with the Rams, where miracle struck. Finally! We won a big game against an elite opponent.

And then we just kept on winning.

It took until December for me to be a true believer. That this team COULD win it all. But, it wasn’t until beating the Rams in the NFC Championship Game that I was all in. On everything. The team, the Super Bowl, Sam Darnold. Everything. This is the team for me. Keep as much of it as humanly possible, extend Darnold forever, and let’s rock n’ roll!

If we had lost to the Rams on Sunday, I don’t know where my head would be. I suppose it would depend on how we lost. If the Rams scored on that 4th down play near the goalline, I’d sure as shit have my doubts about the viability of this defense! If we instead just ran the ball three times into a wall of defenders before punting it back to the Rams with 2+ minutes left, I would wonder what the hell Kubiak was thinking. If Sam Darnold had turned the ball over at any point – giving the Rams the extra possession they needed to win the game – or if they had gone up late and Darnold couldn’t close it out from behind, then I’d be sitting here with you today having, frankly, a very easy conversation about Sam Darnold’s future in Seattle.

But, all of those doubts go away with a Seahawks Super Bowl appearance. Now, the only lingering question is – if we win it all – are we talking about a potential dynasty? Can THIS team make good where the L.O.B. fell short?

That’s the conversation I really want to be having!