Field Gulls
The Seattle Seahawks’ 2025 season has reached the point where national conversation and local belief finally meet. What began as a year filled with uncertainty has turned into a playoff run that demands real analysis — not just from a Seahawks-centric lens, but from a league-wide perspective. That’s exactly why I’m welcoming Garret Greenlee of Football Analysis onto The Hawks Eye Podcast for an in-depth breakdown of where Seattle stands as they prepare for the Divisional Round. If you recall from over the spring, Garret said “I definitely think the national media is a lot lower on Seattle than what they should be, especially with how many positives there were to take away from year one of the Mike Macdonald era.”
One of the central discussions on the show is whether this Seahawks season merely met preseason expectations or exceeded them. From the immediate impact of the rookie class to the offense finding its rhythm and the defense solidifying under Mike Macdonald, Seattle has become one of the more intriguing teams left in the postseason. Garret’s Football Analysis background allows us to zoom out and evaluate Seattle in the context of the entire league, which is where this team’s growth becomes even more apparent.
You can’t talk about the Seahawks in 2025 without addressing Sam Darnold. The conversation has shifted from “Can he hold the job?” to “Where does he rank among NFL quarterbacks right now?” We’ll dig into Darnold’s efficiency, situational play, and how his season stacks up against other playoff quarterbacks — while also discussing what his postseason performance could mean for Seattle’s future at the position.
“I’d probably say 9-12 somewhere in there, 8-12 somewhere,” Greenlee said. “Josh Allen and Patrick Mahoems are up there. Lamar’s up there, Stafford’s up there and then you have like four or five guys right in that next range of ‘hey well you could have him above him and then him above him.’ Even if you wanted to put Sam as high as six or seven somewhere in there, by all means.
“I think the quarterback discussion is way more wide open now than it was a year ago, which I think is beneficial for the sport. I mean, I think it’s good to have parity. I think it’s good to have, you know, ‘hey, I have this guy above this guy.’ And you could have Sam for me anywhere in that 6-7 to 10-12 area somewhere in there.
“The reality is with Sam is there are times that—I mean he had 14 interceptions this year. He finished third in the NFL in interceptions. There’s times where it’s kind of like he gets just like like lock-eyed vision on whoever he is playing and it might happen once a game, but when it does it seems like it’s at an inopportune time whenever it happens. And for those plays to come up when they do, it stinks. But Sam Darnold at his peak, I mean that Washington first half that he...
