Look at these stats!

The Seahawks defense is getting better as the season goes on

If the Seahawks win the Super Bowl this season, people will say that they had one of the greatest defenses of all-time in 2025. Some of you are already probably thinking “no that can’t be right, they’re good but they’re not that good” but I would argue that GOAT defenses are narratively built in reverse:

First you win the Super Bowl and then people place your defense on the all-time list.

And if you don’t win the Super Bowl, nobody will care how good your defense was except to say it wasn’t good enough.

The Seahawks won’t be put on the same pedestal as the 2000 Ravens (four shutouts, 15 teams held to 10 points or less including all four playoff opponents) but I could see them rallying late in the season similar to Pete Carroll’s “all-time” defense in 2013. 12 games into that season, it was the Carolina Panthers — not the Seahawks — hailed as an all-time defense:

The Panthers allowed 29 fewer points than Seattle through 12 games. That’s not a small margin but over the last four games the Seahawks allowed just 45 points and Carolina allowed 84 points, so Seattle finished with the number one defense and then Panthers slipped to 2nd. The Seahawks forced the most turnovers (including 12 in the last four games) and allowed the fewest passing yards and they weren’t championed as arguably the best defense of all-time until they held “the greatest offense of all-time” to 8 points in the Super Bowl.

Eight extraordinarily meaningless points. Would people talk about the Legion of Boom if they had lost the Super Bowl? Or even if Seattle won the Super Bowl but the score was 34-30?

Coming off of their first shutout in 10 years, the Seahawks are now creeping around conversations as the best defense in the league and only getting better as the playoffs get closer. Yes, Seattle notched four interceptions against a quarterback who spent most of his adult life playing for New Hampshire, but pop quiz: Which quarterbacks did the Ravens intercept in 2000 or the Bucs in 2002? Were they all against Peyton Manning and Tom Brady?

(The Ravens had 3 interceptions each off of Tim Couch, Vinny Testaverde, and Troy Aikman long after he should have retired; all defenses eat more at the buffet table.)

The answer is that nobody remembers and nobody cares.

Now ranked 3rd in points allowed, 2nd in points per drive allowed, 6th in takeaways, 2nd in rushing yards allowed, 4th in yards per carry allowed, and 2nd in net yards per pass attempt allowed, the 2025 Seattle Seahawks are straight up “yeesh-ified” going into their last five games and the number one seed in sight.

As in teams are going “yeesh, we gotta play them right now?”

At Next Gen Stats, the Seahawks are tied with the Browns for the second-lowest EPA per play allowed, behind the Houston Texans. (EPA=Expected Points Added. Think of it like simply assigning a point value to every play based on game situation.)

By EPA, the Seahawks are first against the run and sixth against the pass. That passing number is probably adversely impacted by Seattle’s tendency to let up too much after building a big lead + one terrible game against Baker Mayfield. But the Seahawks also still rank first in pressure rate (40.4%) despite being one of the lightest blitzing defenses in the NFL: 26th most often.

Similarly, the Seahawks are the best run defense despite having the second-lowest stacked box rate (more defenders to stop the run) and the fourth-highest light box rate (fewer defenders to stop the run) in the NFL.

Instead, the Seahawks stacked their defensive line with Leonard Williams, Byron Murphy II, and Demarcus Lawrence and it doesn’t stop there:

How much better could Seattle’s defense become by the playoffs if and when they get back Julian Love, Jarran Reed, and the NFL debut of rookie Rylie Mills?

Mike Macdonald hasn’t been super clear about when those three could return but he said Love was trending in the right direction this week and didn’t rule out a Mills debut by the end of the season, although he said the rookie needs “all 21 days” of the practice window. No real surprise there for a player who hasn’t practiced. Macdonald said Reed “looks good” indicating the a return is inevitable even if it doesn’t happen this week.

A defense isn’t “GOAT” or “THEM” until they win the Super Bowl so nobody can really say where the 2025 Seattle Seahawks belong yet. But if the Seahawks do win the Super Bowl, it’ll be because of Mike Macdonald’s defense.

We got some stats to review. These caught my eye.

QB Sam Darnold: 2nd in CPOE behind Drake Maye

CPOE: Completion Percent Above Expectation: The difference between a quarterback’s actual completion percentage and expected completion percentage controlling for the level of difficulty of each pass.

Darnold is coming off of his worst CPOE game of the season, completing 11.2% fewer pass attempts than the expectation against the Vikings. It was actually the first time all season that Darnold was below 0.0%.

Darnold also averaged -0.26 Expected Points Added per Dropback, his third worst game of the season behind Week 1 vs 49ers and Week 11 vs Rams.

Darnold’s numbers have dipped in each of the past three games with the only exception being an OK game against the worst team in the NFL (Titans). The last time he played good, he only threw 12 passes against the Cardinals. So we need to go all the way back to Week 9’s win over the Moons (21/24, 330 yards, 4 TD, 1 INT) to get to Darnold’s last dominant performance.

Is that a concern?

It’s not a concern for Seaside Joe because Darnold’s body of work over the last two years points to a QB who is no worse than average. Yeah he is struggling (29th in passer rating over the last 4 weeks) but one horrific outing against the Rams is doing a lot of heavy lifting for why his numbers are so bad lately.

In that same four-week period, Darnold is 7th in success rate, which is the same as saying that when you need a first down he’ll get you there. Look at the teams competing in the NFC and these are the QBs:

• Jalen Hurts, Eagles

• Caleb Williams, Bears

• Jordan Love, Packers

• Baker Mayfield, Bucs

• Brock Purdy, 49ers

• Matthew Stafford, Rams

• Dak Prescott, Cowboys

• Jared Goff, Lions

• Bryce Young, Panthers

So…which of those quarterbacks do you trust more than Darnold? I’d say maybe Stafford and the Rams just lost to the Panthers with Stafford being one of the biggest reasons for the loss. Again I go back to WHY the Seahawks are even Super Bowl contenders at all: DEFENSE.

If Seattle manages to win it all this season, Darnold goes down in the category of Doug Williams, Mark Rypien, Trent Dilfer, Brad Johnson, Eli Manning, Joe Flacco, Nick Foles, and the Ghost of Peyton Manning. You could probably throw last year’s Super Bowl MVP in there too. Quarterbacks like Darnold don’t just win a Super Bowl once per decade, they win them pretty often.

And this would just be how Sam Darnold is filed today if he wins a Super Bowl. The whole narrative around him could be different in three years. Do the Seahawks have a “good enough” QB with their defense? I’d say they do and it’s already been proven given that they’re 9-3 despite all the turnovers.

Passing related: Elijah Arroyo film study

Seahawks run offense: 6th?!

The Seahawks have rushed for over 100 yards in four straight games and they rank sixth in the NFL in total rushing yards over the past month. That’s on 4.3 yards per carry average, which is 14th. If that doesn’t sound all that amazing, consider that the Seahawks were 31st and averaged 3.7 YPC in the first eight games of the season. As Darnold’s numbers suffer, Kenneth Walker’s improve:

Sharing the backfield 50/50 with Zach Charbonnet, Walker has still averaged 65 rushing yards and 24 receiving yards per game in the last four.

In the same period, Charbonnet is averaging 52 yards per game:

That’s over 115 rushing yards per game from Seattle’s top-2 running backs. The Seahawks don’t have an All-Pro running back, but they have two players who are basically that good when you combine them.

Since Bucs loss: 2nd in points allowed + Point differential

Since they allowed 38 points to Tampa Bay in Week 5, the Seahawks are 2nd in points allowed and point differential, both behind the L.A. Rams. Both Seattle and L.A. are 6-1 in that time. If the two teams win their next two games, then Thursday Night Football’s matchup between two 11-3 teams fighting for the one-seed could be the greatest game in the history of Thursday night…at least in terms of the stakes and the hype.

No telling how good of a game it will actually be, but a lot of people think these are the two best teams in the NFL and it will most likely be for the division lead no matter what happens before then…except that remarkably the 49ers are not out of it and hanging around right behind them at 9-4.

The NFC West title goes to the team that actually wants the toughest road to the Super Bowl.

Ernest Jones Defensive Player of the Week?

It would be crazy if Jones didn’t win because he had two picks and a touchdown, but Jones also finished second among all defensive players with 10 stops! (A stop is essentially a tackle short of the intended yard line by the offense.)

Only Jeremy Chinn had more (11) but Chinn played 22 more snaps than Jones!

Not only should Ernest Jones IV be the player of the week, he had one of the best games of any linebacker all season. The current stat line on Jones’ season:

83 tackles, 5 interceptions, 150 interception yards, 1 TD, 7 PD, 3 TFL, 0.5 sacks

The last two linebackers to reach 100 tackles and 5 interceptions in a season were Lavonte David in 2013 and Shaq Leonard in 2019, both of whom were All-Pros those years. They did have more sacks than Jones but I wonder how their run defense compares?

The last Seahawks player with 100 tackles and 5 INTs? Earl Thomas in…2013.

By the way, Seattle extended Jones before the season. He’s 17th in average annual salary among all linebackers. Quite a bargain for a borderline or better all-pro. Like anything you learned in this newsletter? Share it with other Seahawks fans!

Seaside Joe 2465