Field Gulls
If you read national media outlets (ESPN, Bleacher Report, CBS Sports, among others), you’ll notice there’s not a lot of widespread love or belief that the Seattle Seahawks will be as much as a playoff team this year, forget about competing for the NFC West. Even the betting lines have the Seahawks with a 7.5 win O/U.
I have no issue whatsoever with the reserved opinions about the Seahawks and the predictions of no playoffs or even a last place finish in the NFC West. While I personally believe Seattle will at least make the postseason and have a very good shot to win the division, I’m not such a homer that I can’t see the obvious paths to a non-winning season that don’t involve a slew of injuries.
The Geno Smith era has come and gone with the Seahawks posting winning records every season, making the playoffs once and losing out on tiebreakers the other two times.
I am begging you to not view this as “Geno’s fault” or anything like that, but there’s a reason why his tenure as Seahawks quarterback felt… a little lacking.
Or, to put it another way: The Seahawks were a +5 in the win column, had the point differential of a sub-.500 team, and the win strength of a paper tiger.
Back in December, following the loss to the Minnesota Vikings, I wrote this blurb that extended to the final seasons of the Russell Wilson era:
Since 2020, the Seahawks are just 3-17 against eventual division champions (usually Super Bowl contenders, with few exceptions). The .150 win percentage is an abysmal 28th in the NFL. This includes getting swept by the Rams in 2021, as well as the 49ers in 2022 and 2023. One of those “division champion” wins was the 7-9 Washington Football Team in 2020. This stat could actually get worse if they lose to the Rams again and the Atlanta Falcons don’t win the NFC South.
In that same time frame, they are tied for the most wins in the NFL against teams below .400. That stat could fluctuate depending on whether or not the San Francisco 49ers lose out this season. And even then, more than half of those wins were by one possession.
Yes, I included the 2020 division champion Seahawks to not isolate almost everything exclusively to the Geno Smith era. Beyond any other asterisks we could put on that unprecedented coronavirus pandemic season, those Seahawks were pretty damn inflated. They were a 12-4 team with a point differential more akin to a 10-6 squad despite playing the third easiest schedule in the entire NFL by opponent win percentage. Their only game against a serious Super Bowl contender that season was a complete humiliation against the Buffalo Bills. Against the only other playoff team they faced with a winning record, they went 1-2 versus the Rams and were blown out in the playoffs.
As an update, the Seahawks have the second-most wins...
