The best Seahawks starts of all-time
The 2025 Seahawks shouldn't suffer the same fate as the last 2 good Seahawks teams
The Seattle Seahawks have scored 324 points this season, which is the second-most in franchise history through 11 games:
In Seattle’s six highest-scoring starts in franchise history, they’ve always won at least 8 games. The Seahawks have scored more points through 11 games this season than they did in their Super Bowl seasons of 2013 and 2005, as well as their other Super Bowl season of 2014, which is all the way down at 10th and a 7-4 start.
Tuesday BONUS Joe: Is this the best defensive line in Seahawks history and other important Week 13 thoughts
It is no coincidence that the one time the Seahawks won the Super Bowl is also the one time they started 10-1, which eventually became 11-1 prior to losing two of the next three.
The Seahawks currently have a point differential of +107, the third-best 11-game start in franchise history behind 1984’s +136 and 2013’s +127.
The 1984 team ran into Dan Marino’s 14-2 Dolphins, by far the best team that Marino ever played on and it was truly the worst game that Seattle’s defense played all season—without much help by the offense. You can’t really rearrange the deck chairs in the Seahawks favor, that was Marino’s season (until it was Joe Montana’s season).
You can watch the full 1984 playoff game here if you dare.
The 2013 Seahawks won the Super Bowl.
Then you have the 2025 Seahawks, followed by the 2005 Seahawks at +88, a team that just barely managed to start 9-2 because of the “Jay Feely game” when Seattle’s home crowd 12 defense caused him to miss all three game-winning field goal attempts.
You can watch those kicks (gleefully) here.
But that +88 immediately balloons to +168 after Seattle’s next TWO games (!!), blowout victories over the Eagles and 49ers. The Seahawks would need to win their next two games by 61 points to reach that mark by the end of their 13th contest.
The ‘05 Seahawks ended up winning 11 games in a row and starting 13-2 until resting starters in a Week 17 loss to the Packers (but not giving him the entire day off, something you wouldn’t see today probably).
So when we talk about the best “11-game” Seahawks teams of all-time, this is definitely one of them:
10-1 in 2013
9-2 in 1984, 2005, and 2019
8-3 in 1999, 2020, and 2025
7-4 seven other times, plus 7-3-1 in 2016
Those 2019 and 2020 don’t come across as being nearly as good as the current Seahawks team.
2019 was a defensive nightmare
The Seahawks allowed 400+ yards eight times during the season, including 510 yards to the Falcons in Week 8. Seattle allowed 9 of their first 10 opponents to score at least 20 points…and six of those teams to score over 24 points.
This Seahawks team has only allowed 5 times (3 of those in the last 3 games) and only allowed over 24 points one time.
In terms of the last 3 games, we’re obviously looking at the fact that the Seahawks had 7 turnovers combined against the Cardinals and Rams, plus 7 of the points against the Titans came on a punt return. Seattle is 4th in points per defensive DRIVE allowed, compared to 19th in that category in 2019.
Player to player, was anybody on the 2019-2020 defense as good as Leonard Williams? Bobby Wagner is a Hall of Famer, but was he as good then as Williams is now?
And although the Seahawks were a much better rushing team in 2019 (4th in yards, 10th in yards per carry), they’re a much better passing team in 2025 (1st in net yards per pass attempt, 4th in yards). Player to player, Jaxon Smith-Njigba might actually end up with more receiving yards in 2025 than Tyler Lockett and DK Metcalf had combined in 2019 (1,957).
Comparing 2025’s 8-3 start to 2019’s 11-3 start, I can see why that team fell apart (blew the division and the number one seed to the 49ers, so had to go to Lambeau in the playoffs and fell behind 28-10) for reasons that I wouldn’t expect to see again this year.
2020 was an offensive calamity
The very next year, Pete Carroll seems to find answers for the offensive woes of 2019, letting Brian Schottenheimer loose with “Let Russ Cook”. But it was only a short-term solution.
The Seahawks started 5-0 and scored over 30 points in seven of their first eight games! That’s amazing!
It was also fool’s gold, as Seattle’s defense faced more pass attempts than any other defense, finished 31st in passing yards allowed, and had a negative EPA (expected points added) in each of their first 11 games of 2020, which is bad.
Pete needed adjustments from Schottenheimer and that neutered the offense:
Seattle fell from 1st in scoring in the first 8 games (34.25)
To 16th in scoring in the last 8 games (23.12)
The Seahawks did end up having the number one scoring defense in the second half of 2020, so Pete’s plan almost kind of worked, but it’s asking a lot of players and coaches to hold playoff teams under 20 in order to win the Super Bowl.
Seattle ended up looking ridiculous in the playoffs, losing 30-20 to the Rams with a season-worst 11 first downs on offense. The Seahawks also had 2 turnovers in the wild card: Seattle went 0-5 when they had multiple turnovers in 2020 compared to 12-0 when they didn’t.
Well, already know that’s kind of not a problem in 2025!
The Seahawks are 3-3 when they turn the ball over multiple times and 5-0 when they don’t. Seattle has already won two games this season when turning it over at least 3 times and losing the turnover battle.
In Pete’s entire 14-year tenure, he only had 8 wins when the Seahawks turned it over 3+ times and only one win when they turned it over 4 times.
Of course the goal is no turnovers, but aside from that flaw this Seattle offense is much better than that one with Russell Wilson and Schottenheimer:
The Seahawks finished 19th (!) in NY/A that season
They’re 1st right now
It took them being 17th in pass attempts to be 16th in passing yards
This team is 31st in attempts and 4th in yards
The 2020 offensive line had Duane Brown (35 years old) and Mike Iupati (33) on the left side and maybe age isn’t everything but Iupati retired after 2020. Brown had just a couple of years left. That team had Brandon Shell at right tackle.
The 2025 offensive line has at least three starters we assume they want for a long time to come, maybe four. What they lack in run blocking, they make up for and then some in pass protection; Wilson was sacked 47 times that season (sometimes by his own fault) and Sam Darnold is on pace for 17 sacks!
Kenneth Walker has almost as many yards (677) as Chris Carson had in 2020 (681) and Zach Charbonnet (385) has more than Carlos Hyde (356).
JSN already broke DK Metcalf’s franchise record for receiving yards set in 2020. You could call Lockett a better WR2 than Cooper Kupp, but also A.J. Barner a better TE than Will Dissly.
Comparing 2020 to 2025 offense:
2025 version of Darnold over 2020 version of Wilson
2025 OL over 2020 OL
OC Kubiak over OC Schottenheimer
JSN as WR1 over DK as WR1
Walker/Charbonnet over Carson/Hyde
Barner over Dissly
But Lockett over Kupp
Now compound that with the fact that even if 2020’s defense was good by the end of the season, 2025’s defense is explosive, terrifying, and capable of keeping Seattle in any game, even when Darnold throws four picks against the Rams.
That defense finished 15th in points per drive. This defense is 4th.
That defense was 24th on third down. This defense is 6th on third down.
It’s why so many people still consider the Seahawks to be one of, if not the most dangerous team in playoff contention despite being 31st in turnovers.
If they just turn it over once per game, they’re almost unstoppable:
0-1 turnovers average score: 31 to 16.6
2+ turnovers average score: 28.1 to 22.6
I don’t know what’s more amazing: That the Seahawks are winning by 2 touchdowns when they barely turn it over or that they’re still winning by almost a touchdown when they turn it over a lot!
By some measures the Seahawks have had better starts than 2025, but by the eye test maybe no other Seahawks team compares to this one except for 2013. And we know what happened then.
Tuesday BONUS Joe: Is this the best defensive line in Seahawks history and other important Week 13 thoughts
Seaside Joe 2458
Ok. THIS just blew me away.
“Jaxson Smith-Njigba might actually end up with more receiving yards in 2025 than Tyler Lockett and DK Metcalf had combined in 2019 (1,957).”
That’s just incredible. It’s not like Lockett and DK were just so-so receivers. They were quality starters on a good offensive team.
Shifting gears, anyone else notice how Darryl Johnson appears to become the newest member of the Seahawks fan club on Sunday’s game broadcast?
Speaking of the 2005 SB team, the AFC was the designated "Home" team, so I bought a white custom #40 jersey with "SUPERBOWL" across the shoulders. The whine-ass Steellers thought they were SOooo disrespected they should wear visiting team white Uni's even though Detroit is much closer to Pittsburgh than Seattle, so for twenty years I've been wearing a wrong-colored jersey. I have a dear and wonderful friend who lives in Pittsburgh and loves his Steelers, but honest to God, fuck the Steelers forever.