How different will Seahawks look in 2026?

Predicting which positions the Seahawks will change in 2026 and how they'll do it: Draft, free agency, or trade?

As we wait to find out if Klint Kubiak will stay or go, the question of how much different the Seattle Seahawks could look in 2026 is worth a check-in for Thursday’s bonus newsletter.

By the way, I’d like to personally apologize to each and every Seaside Joe subscriber individually for yanking your heart back and forth between “Kubiak’s leaving” and “Kubiak’s staying” and back to “Kubiak’s leaving”; I’m that type of person who watches a crime doc and genuinely believes the story of whoever spoke last.

I would have acquitted Robert Durst if The Jinx didn’t have that final bathroom scene.

I’m honestly not trying to give you anything but the truth and Adam Schefter’s report earlier in the week that all the jobs would be filled by Wednesday felt very truthful to me. Now we know that Kubiak has second interviews scheduled on Saturday with both the Cardinals and the Raiders, once again magnifying his presence on the market as the best available offensive coach for the last two openings.

As much as the Raiders job feels like Joe Pesci walking into the basement to become a made man in Goodfellas, Las Vegas has the number one pick, Tom Brady’s counsel, and general manager John Spytek is very close with Gary Kubiak, as the coach credited the exec with being an integral piece to Denver’s Super Bowl championship in 2015.

So if the Raiders go full court press on Kubiak this weekend, the Super Bowl could be his 20th and final time calling games for the Seahawks.

And by the way… Oh well.

That’s the NFL. The longest tenured non-head coach, play-calling offensive coordinator in the league was hired IN 2025!

If Kubiak wasn’t leaving this year, he was leaving next year. That’s the job. Part of Mike Macdonald’s job description is to plan for who is going to be the OC two seasons from now and to never stop doing that. The Eagles just hired Sean Mannion, who was a quarterback on the Seahawks in 2023 (!!!), to be their eighth new playcaller in the last eight years. (Shane Steichen was the only person to be OC in back-to-back years, but wasn’t play caller one of those years.)

—Replacing an offensive coordinator is expected.

—Replacing important players can be much harder and is always going to be more difficult to predict.

This is the Seahawks offensive depth chart today:

This is the Seahawks defensive depth chart today:

That’s today. That’s January, 2026. Seattle has free agents. Draft picks. Aging players. Cut candidates. Trade candidates. How many key roles will have new players in 2026?

Let’s take a look at how 2026 could be different.