Some people are fans of the Seattle Seahawks. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Seattle Seahawks. This 2025 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: Seattle Seahawks.
Your 2024 record: 10-7, missed the playoffs. No team this decade has been more politely invisible. It’s like if the AFC South were 15 percent cooler.
Seattle beat two winning teams all of last season. The first came in Week 1 against a Denver team starting Bo "Duke" Nix for the very first time. The second was in Week 18 against an LA Rams team that rested all of its vital starters. I didn’t even get to experience the joy of seeing Pete Carroll on the sidelines for these Seahawks, biting into his gum like he thinks there’s a Tootsie Roll at the center of it. As a result, the only thing colorful about this team a year ago was whenever they decided to bust out the glow-stick uniforms. Is that a football team, or a bunch of claw machine prizes? One can never tell.
Things started out well enough. The Seahawks opened the campaign by going 3-0 against a bunch of losers and nobodies. But a 1-5 skid after that ensured that they would be an IN THE HUNT graphic for the rest of the way. Jared Goff completed every pass he threw against them in a loss at Detroit. The following week, they blew a chance to tie the New York Giants in the final minute when this happened:
Imagine that happening to your team and not to the New York Giants. Embarrassing. I’d rather have my mom catch me hooking up jumper cables to my nipples.
The rest of the losses were highly Seahawks-esque in nature. They picked off Josh Allen for the first time in Allen’s season, and still lost to Buffalo by three touchdowns. They lost to the Rams (this was the game where the Rams were trying) when Demarcus Robinson caught the game-winning TD in overtime. They were annihilated at home by Green Bay, then followed that up with another home loss—their sixth of the season—to Minnesota when Sam Darnold hit a streaking Justin Jefferson down the sideline for the game-winner. You guys were still playoff eligible after that, and even after a 6-3 Boxing Day “win” against Chicago that American audiences deeply resented. It didn’t matter. You still missed the postseason. But hey, you would’ve just thrown the ball too often in the playoffs anyway. No, I’m not gonna drop it.
Your coach: Mike Macdonald, who’ll remain Not Pete Carroll to me until the day he does something important, which will be never. Carroll, still a spry man at 73, has fucked off to Vegas, where the media will surely praise him for conducting Raiders practices that really stress competition between players. Macdonald, meanwhile, has already fired one offensive coordinator. That’s never a good sign, and yet somehow it gets worse. Macdonald replaced that failed OC this past offseason with Klint Kubiak. This team fucking adores one-and-done OCs, I tell you. If they could hire a different Schottenheimer for that position every year, they would.
Kubiak has not held down the same job for longer than one year since the beginning of the decade. Like his brothers Kade, Korbin, Kackle, and Krumrie, he’s part of the Gary Kubiak coaching and family tree, which means that he likes to marry the run with the pass. Truly revolutionary shit. This year, they’re gonna go do this new thing in Seattle called “play action,” which is gonna blow your fucking skull the first time you encounter it. And at the helm of this futuristic laser attack will be…
Your quarterback: Sam Darnold, who arrives on a $100 million deal to replace the outgoing Geno Smith. Like Smith, Darnold is a former Jets bust who hung around the league long enough to become halfway respectable. Also like Smith, you still have zero chance of winning a title with this man running things. Take it from someone who watched Darnold stage a miraculous pop-up season in Minnesota a year ago—including 35 TD passes—only for him to turtle up like a shy bowel movement over the final two weeks of the season.
Darnold holds onto the ball a beat longer than other QBs because he’s constantly looking for open downfield shots. This makes him exciting to watch from a clean pocket, especially when he’s got Justin Jefferson at his disposal. But, as the Vikings learned in January, this brand of derring-doodoo also makes Darnold vulnerable to sacks if his interior O-line protection is shitty. And hey, look at this: The Seahawks gave up the second-highest pressure rate in the league a year ago. Why not just invite Sam Darnold for coffee and then shoot him in the face? That way, you cut out the middleman.
Speaking of middlemen, this is who decided to bid against himself for Darnold’s services:
Oh right, it’s GM John Schneider, whose contract with Seattle lasts until 2031. Makes you wanna reach for Kurt Cobain’s shotgun.
Your backup QB is Drew Lock, here for a second tour of duty after existing on the Giants roster a year ago. Behind Lock is rookie Jalen Milroe, who’s like Anthony Richardson if NFL teams had really been honest with themselves about Anthony Richardson. Jalen Milroe is the last QB to ever play for Nick Saban before Saban decided to retire. There’s a reason for that.
What’s new that sucks: Darnold flourishes when it comes to downfield passing, which makes it curious that the Seahawks would ship out their best deep threat (WR DK Metcalf, fading but still serviceable) and sign former Rams wideout Cooper Kupp as his replacement. Cooper Kupp has not played a full season since 2021, and was never a field stretcher in his prime anyway. The latter also holds true for up-and-coming WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who does most of his damage out of the slot. But you can’t make the whole airplane out of slot guys, so Schneider reached out and grabbed boundary ornament Marquez Valdes-Scantling to play on the outside. It’s fun to have MVS around as the WR5 for, say, Patrick Mahomes. But when you have to RELY on this man for things, that’s when shit tends to go sideways.
The tight end room is rookie Elijah Arroyo sitting alone in a desk chair, waiting for a knock on the door that will never come.
As for the O-line, the Seahawks' best player there remains LT Charles Cross. RT Abe Lucas gets hurt a lot, and the interior line has only rookie Grey Zabel (from NDSU; never a good sign) as its only potential upgrade. So get ready for a double dose of RBs Kenneth Walker III and Zach Charbonnet until both men are hurt come November. After that, you get the full Sam Darnold treatment. Watch a tape of the Rams sacking him (Principal Rooney voice) nine times in the Wild Card last season to see what that’s like.
Over on defense, we’ve got former Cowboys DT DeMarcus Lawrence and joining what remains a very good front seven. And rookie S Nick Emmanwori is just the kind of athletic freak who’ll remind fans of Kam Chancellor before they actually have to watch Emmanwori play NFL football.
Both George Fant and Noah Fant are no longer on the roster, which is good because the gift shop had already run out of FANT license plates.
What has always sucked:
“You already punched me in my stomach once,” one player told me of his reaction to Carroll’s explanation, “and he just took a knife this time and put it through my soul.”
Yep, it’s 2025 and we’re still dwelling on the endgame of Super Bowl 49. If you’re a Seahawks fan reading this, you might be like, “Ugh, give a rest!” It ain’t ME keeping this ball of yarn up in the air. This team could win five more Super Bowls in the next 30 years, and the rest of us would still have to hear from the 12th Butt about the two dumb Super Bowls they lost. MEW MEW WE SHOULD HAVE RUN MARSHAWN UP THE GUT! MEW MEW BILL LEAVY IS THE REASON I DRINK TOO MUCH!
Spare me. Marshawn Lynch is now an overexposed has-been doing ads for deodorant you spray on your gooch, and you guys aren’t the first fanbase to ever feel wronged by questionable officiating. I’d tell you to get over those losses, but that would require you getting over yourselves, which we both know will never happen. So you deserve to end your lives cheering for a respectably successful team that no one else ever really has to think about at all. And you deserve to have Jeff Bezos buy your team and then let Lauren Sanchez-Bezos-Gabor-JordonHudson run it by herself. The Seattle Seahawks have served out their usefulness. You dumbasses will be the last to realize it.
The Oklahoma City Thunder are NBA champions.
What might not suck: If DT Byron Murphy II can stay healthy, he might be able to literally eat Kyler Murray in the middle of a game.
HEAR IT FROM SEAHAWKS FANS!
Alice:
Our fanbase is just a vape cloud with herpes.
Tyler:
This team won't win another championship until it moves to Oklahoma City.
Gabriel:
Not to be dramatic, but if Jeff Bezos does ending up buying this team I will impale myself asshole-first on the Space Needle.
Stan:
If your GM is "respected around the league," it means he's a fucking mark.
Peiru:
We replaced Geno with last year's Matt Cassel.
Bobby Silverman:
Four years ago, I was sick of the team losing to the Cowboys every year in the first round of the playoffs, but now that same outcome would feel like a monumental accomplishment.
Evi:
Because 7–10 could still get a Wild Card, and because I will be excited if they get it.
Alex:
Our first-round pick this year looks like Farva from Super Troopers.
Maddy:
This team got white and talentless so fast you'd think they lost a Supreme Court case.
Max:
Putting Sam behind our line is like turning a turtle over in the desert to see if it can survive.
Hamilton:
In case you were curious, I feel absolutely nothing about Sam Darnold and in fact, until I started typing this email, had forgotten he was even on the team. Emmanwori is going to kick ass though, at least that's cool.
Jackson:
I’m tired of seeing headlines praising John Schneider’s negotiating wizardry of putting together team friendly contracts for players absolutely no one else wants.
Paul:
White herbs from Kent and Redmond acting like going to training camp in Renton is like braving a cross between Escape from New York and The Warriors because there are visible homeless people.
Collin:
People wearing 12 jerseys either want Eastern Oregon to be part of Idaho, or they just got a job at Amazon in Bellevue and need something for Blue Friday in the office.
Braden:
They gave up 175 yards on the ground to the fucking Giants at home.
Kelly:
The only success this fanbase has had in the last few seasons was "winning" the Broncos Country trade.
Charles:
The excitement over Washington-born Cooper Kupp coming home and playing for the Seahawks is real. I live three blocks from where he went to high school. It’s going to feel incredible watching him catch 3 passes for 37 yards on 10 targets and looking out my window at where he got his start.
Jay Willis:
Put two Rainier tall boys in your average Seahawks fan, and they will tell you how glad they are to finally have a “high IQ” quarterback to run the offense this season. For the first time in a long time. Since the Matt Hasselbeck era, actually. They will not elaborate further.
TJ:
I can never remember our coach's name. How many Mike Mc's can the NFL tolerate? I've taken to just calling our guy Yacht Rock.
Rueben:
Are we doomed to become the Betty Ford clinic for mediocre first round quarterbacks?
If the Raiders with Pete Carroll win a Super Bowl before I see the Seahawks win another one, I am going to vomit blood.
Jacob:
In the cemetery where my mother is buried in rural Washington, there is a tombstone nearby with the Seahawks logo engraved on it. That tombstone has been there for at least as long as my mom, who died of cancer in 2004. At that time, the Seahawks had never won jack shit. They were still at least two years away from losing their first Super Bowl, and still a decade from finally winning their sole championship. The memory of that title would then get immediately erased by the knife-twisting embarrassment of the following year. All of Seattle’s best years were still in the future when this poor sap splurged on engraving the Seahawks logo on his eternal resting place. And for what? What the hell was he even trying to communicate here?! Centuries, nay, millennia from now, when whatever survivors of the Anthropocene sift through the detritus of our fallen civilization and try to piece together where it all went wrong, just what will that Seahawks logo tombstone tell them?
I’ll tell you right now: it’s that we were willing to tie our entire identities to a profound and dispiriting mediocrity, because we lacked the imagination to do anything else. What a fitting epitaph for America.
David:
This is spiritually a Jeff Fisher team at this point, even if he never actually worked here.
Dan:
We took a QB that always had us saying "Is he any good?" and swapped him out for a model that makes us all say "He's probably not any good." We have twelve slot receivers and MVS. We brought in a new OC for the twelfth year in a row. Our offensive philosophy is perfectly encapsulated by having the highest paid punter of all time. The defense will be just fierce enough to make sure the losses are close enough to inspire false hope.
Johnny:
This man just:
(a) Delivered your newspaper
(b) Made you a sandwich at Subway
(c) Gave you some helpful advice on comfortable shoes
(d) Coached the Hawks to a 10-7 record in his first season yet wouldn’t be recognized by Seattle fans if they saw him walking outside Lumen Field after a game
(e) All of the above
Lucy Bloom:
A few years ago I went to pick up a free-50 inch TV off Craigslist at a trailer park. This couple was upgrading. When I walked across the threshold, bile shot up my throat, and my eyes stung. The stench of cat pee in there could have been used as a weapon of war. I hope nobody ever needs to make words to describe that smell. Every inch of that trailer was covered in Seahawks gear.
Brian:
Looking forward to signing JJ McCarthy to save us three years from now.
Will:
The moment our Steve Largent retired from football, he immediately got to work running for congress with the sole purpose of preventing gay people from marrying.
Joey:
Seattle is a beautiful city that is too expensive, has terrible traffic, and gets more rain a year than fucking Dublin.
Our coach has all the charisma of the couch fucker and manages his roster like the fucking Bobs from Office Space.
Zeb:
We’re headed straight to the same shitty bin as Bears fans, strutting like we root for an elite franchise because of a single great season.
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