Last season, the Seattle Seahawks hired former Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald to be their new head coach, and in his first season in the role, he led the team to a 10-7 record and a second-place finish in the NFC West, behind only the Los Angeles Rams.
However, this offseason, Seattle has made more changes to their roster and coaching staff that will significantly impact their performance on the field each week.
The most impactful moves, including trading away Geno Smith and D.K. Metcalf to replace them with Sam Darnold and Cooper Kupp have some doubting that they’ll finish near the top of the division again in 2025.
In fact, Bleacher Report’s Moe Moton recently predicted that the eight teams that will finish in fourth in their divisions this year, and the Seahawks were his pick for the NFC West.
“Macdonald, an accomplished defensive play-caller, should be able to field a top-10 scoring and total defense with All-Pro/Pro Bowl players and budding talent on all three levels of the unit,” Moton wrote. “Yet he may not be satisfied with his offense in consecutive terms.
“Darnold will regress behind an offensive line with question marks on the interior, resulting in Seattle taking a slight step back in the standings in a seven- or eight-win campaign.”
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A lot of the team’s success this upcoming season will be determined by the play of their quarterback. Darnold had a rough start to his career after being the third-overall pick in the 2018 NFL draft, but he was a Pro Bowler in his lone season with the Minnesota Vikings in 2024. However, even that year ended poorly, with Darnold playing his worst football of the year.
If Seattle is getting the Darnold that lit up the league for most of the season, they’ll be in good hands in 2025 and shouldn’t finish in the basement of the division. But if it’s the Darnold that completed just 43.9% of his passes for 166 yards in Week 17 against the Detroit Lions last year, it’ll be a different story.
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