Will Seahawks be better than Cardinals after the draft?

Comparing the Seahawks and Cardinals ahead of the 2024 NFL Draft: Seaside Joe 1863

It’s something I felt I had to bring up several times towards the end of the season and after the year was over because it could be easily overlooked, but the Arizona Cardinals were as good or better than the Seattle Seahawks for half of 2023. From Weeks 10-17, the Cardinals went 3-4 (with a bye) and the Seahawks went 3-5.

Of course, win-loss record isn’t in itself indicative of talent and comparison, it needs more context. But even without studying Arizona’s season as closely as Seattle’s, I think most fans would agree that the Seahawks played so poorly in Pete Carroll’s final 10 games as the head coach that it wouldn’t be unfathomable for any below-average team to have been better. Remember, the Seahawks were 5-2 prior to a 37-3 loss to the Baltimore Ravens that practically lit the fuse for Mike Macdonald to replace Carroll.

Until a narrow 21-20 season finale victory over the Cardinals that necessitated a last minute touchdown and two-point conversion to Tyler Lockett to win in Arizona, Kyler Murray’s team was getting better results than Geno Smith’s team: The Cardinals went to Pittsburgh and beat the Steelers 24-10, a team that defeated the Seahawks in Seattle 30-24. Seattle’s best win after Week 2 was a 20-17 victory over the Eagles with Drew Lock at QB, but Arizona beat them too and did it in Philadelphia.

The Cardinals went 1-8 without Murray and then when he returned Arizona looked just as capable as the Seahawks of going 9-8 or 8-9. Will that continue in 2024 and could Seattle end up in last place for the second time in the last four seasons?

A franchise’s Super Bowl and playoff hopes are never as important as that team’s chances of winning or finishing second in their own division. That’s why it is important to periodically review the NFC West and compare the other three teams to the Seahawks. I recently wrote that the Rams are probably a more formidable opponent than the 49ers, but these power struggles change hands quickly: I’d slot L.A. below San Francisco again until we know how the Rams respond to the retirement of Aaron Donald.

With the 49ers and Rams expected to be first and second in the division, can the Seahawks still cling to at least being in third place next season? Not to say that that is their goal, but Seattle hasn’t been good enough for me to argue their comparisons to teams that have been in the Super Bowl recently and could go back again in 2024. The Cardinals have been on an interesting rebuilding path since firing Kliff Kingsbury and have a lot of capital in this month’s draft, so will the Seahawks be able to avoid the basement again or is this a non-competition as it usually is with Arizona?

Last season

On the surface, it doesn’t seem close: The Cardinals went 4-13 and were outscored by 125 points while the Seahawks went 9-8 and were outscored by 38 points. But if we look at the last 10 games of the season: Seattle went 4-6 and were outscored by 68 points, Arizona went 3-7 and was outscored by 70 points. And the different in win-loss record is partly dictated by Lockett’s last-minute 8 points to beat the Cardinals in the finale.

If not for two plays, the Seahawks would have gone 3-7 and the Cardinals would have gone 4-6 with the better point differential.

For me, this is as clear as any explanation for why Pete was fired despite posting another winning season to his resume. The Seahawks spent more than half of an entire season as being worse than the Cardinals and just two seasons prior finished in fourth place in the NFC West. In two of three years, Seattle was as bad as any team in the division and they certainly would not have made the playoffs in 2022 if not for L.A.’s collapse after winning the Super Bowl.

I don’t believe in there being any real “momentum” from one season to the next. All that “momentum” is for Arizona is a fancy way for saying that the team played a hell of a lot better with Kyler Murray than they did with quarterbacks who aren’t good enough to be starters in the league. Even if Murray is the 20th best QB, that would still be a lot better than Josh Dobbs and Clayton Tune.

If the Seahawks were going downhill, that “momentum” is likely impacted by the team’s decision to make a change at head coach.

So leaving momentum out of it, I think both franchises used the latter half of last season to evaluate which players should stay and which ones need to be replaced. Realistically, the rosters for both teams will appear mostly the same on the surface other than the fact that the Cardinals might be a couple weeks out from drafting Marvin Harrison, Jr..

For these reasons, I evaluate that both Seattle and Arizona started this offseason at similar levels of competitiveness. Will they finish it out that way or will one team take a lead over the other?

HC: Mike Macdonald vs. Jonathan Gannon

Gannon’s advantage is that he’s gotten his “rookie season” out of the way and now he has the opportunity to evaluate the mistakes he made and correct them. Whether Gannon will do that and be adept at fixing what went wrong, nobody knows, but there’s no question that he has an experience advantage over Macdonald.

Macdonald’s advantage is that nobody in the NFL knows what to expect of him as a head coach. There’s two years of film out there of his work as a defensive coordinator, but not with this team. The league is no stranger to first-year successes, it’s only a matter of whether that head coach will keep getting better like Sean McVay or be a one-year wonder like Brian Daboll.

Sometimes it is better to have that gradual improvement like Dan Campbell.

Can’t say which head coach is better, but the NFC West will be a gauntlet again if both turn out as their teams hope.

QB: Geno Smith vs. Kyler Murray

Completely different styles, strengths, weaknesses, schemes, etc.. It may be just as important—if not crucial—to instead compare offensive coordinators Ryan Grubb and Drew Petzing. We know nothing of how Grubb will do in the NFL, whereas Petzing was praised for his first year as an OC in 2023 and somehow not being the worst when Murray was out.

Generally speaking, Geno and Kyler are both playing for their jobs in a sense. Both teams could choose to make a change at quarterback during or after the 2024 season. If the Seahawks were in Arizona’s draft position then they could be likely to choose a quarterback, but with where both teams are at it seems they’ll both stick with their veteran options and 2022 class backups: Seattle traded for Sam Howell and Arizona traded for Desmond Ridder.

Defense: Macdonald vs. Nick Rallis

If Macdonald is a wunderkind of the head coaching variety as the NFL’s youngest after he dethroned McVay, then Rallis is the phenom of defensive coordinators at only 30 years old. There were reportedly a number of teams after Rallis last offseason and he chose the Cardinals.

There just aren’t many players on the Cardinals—or the Seahawks for that matter—who fans would point to as franchise cornerstone types. Devon Witherspoon, Leonard Williams for Seattle, and Budda Baker would be the standout for Arizona; although Kyzir White was named the team’s defensive MVP over Jalen Thompson.

Overall, the Seahawks and Cardinals had two of the worst defenses in the NFL in 2023 and both ownership groups probably expect to see improvement immediately.

Offensive line

The Cardinals cut left tackle D.J. Humphries and are patching the hole with Jonah Williams, a former first round disappointment with the Bengals. Arizona traded up to pick tackle Paris Johnson with the sixth pick in 2023 and are keeping him on the right side. Interior offensive linemen Elijah Wilkinson, Will Hernandez, and Hjalte Froholdt hold the lead to start, but the Cardinals signed Evan Brown off of the Seahawks free agent list. This position could be addressed by Arizona with one of their two first round picks.

We know Seattle’s situation well in that the Seahawks could be elated with having Charles Cross and Abe Lucas, but will they both be able to start 17 games per season? The guard and center spots continue to be works in progress and the team has hinted at signing more veterans in the future like perhaps Cody Whitehair and/or Laken Tomlinson.

If the Cardinals end up picking a left tackle like Joe Alt and then moving Williams inside to guard, it could give them a huge advantage in the trenches moving forward. This doesn’t seem like what they will do, but I wouldn’t rule it out and they could still pick a very good OL with one of their next picks after their first. Seattle doesn’t have nearly as many options to improve their offensive line in the draft.

Top-5 players

I find it imperative to compare teams by their best players, as this is always how we define great teams: The 2013 Seahawks are synonymous with names like Richard Sherman, Marshawn Lynch, Kam Chancellor, and Earl Thomas, for example. The Chiefs dynasty is Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and Chris Jones.

It could be controversial to try and name the Seahawks top-5 players but could we say Devon Witherspoon, Leonard Williams, DK Metcalf, Abe Lucas, and maybe Kenneth Walker are up there? It’s tough with Lucas’s injury history and Tyler Lockett’s most recent season maybe indicating that Seattle isn’t getting as much out of their best players as they’d hope. Perhaps Noah Fant, Charles Cross, Uchenna Nwosu, Dre’Mont Jones, Boye Mafe, Riq Woolen, Zach Charbonnet, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, or even Jerome Baker will firmly establish themselves in the top-5.

I don’t want to say I’m an expert on Arizona’s five best players, although it is safe to say that they’re definitely hoping to see prime career efforts from Kyler, Budda, Paris, James Conner, Zaven Collins, Thompson, and Trey McBride. And any comparison is incomplete without knowing who the Cardinals and Seahawks will draft in the first round.

Free Agency

Before free agency, I compared resources for the four NFC West teams and mentioned that even if the Cardinals had the most money to spend they also have the least amount of buying power: Free agents do not want to play for Arizona. The Cardinals would have had to overpay like the Panthers did to convince Damien Lewis and Robert Hunt to sign with Carolina and ultimately it seems as though Arizona was more hesitant to do that.

The Cardinals signed Williams, cornerback Sean Murphy-Bunting, defensive tackles Justin Jones, Bilal Nichols, and Khyiris Tonga, linebacker Mack Wilson, receiver Chris Moore, DeeJay Dallas, Brown, and traded for Ridder.

The Seahawks probably made bigger splashes in free agency despite having less money to spend. It doesn’t make Seattle “better” by any means, it’s just a fact that the Seahawks may have signed 4-5 starters in free agency because that’s what they needed to do to fill out the roster. Seattle is practically out of money and the Cardinals still have over $20 million to spend.

Draft

With picks 1.4, 1.27, 2.35, 3.66, 3.71, 3.90, and 4.104, the Cardinals pick seven times in the same amount of draft area that will only see the Seahawks pick three times: 1.16, 3.81, and 4.102.

It doesn’t matter if the Seahawks trade back from 16, there’s very little that they can do to gain any ground on the Cardinals in 2024 draft capital.

Arizona could even trade back from 1.4 and gain even more, but with their first three picks the Cardinals could pick Marvin Harrison (a potential WR1 from his first start in the NFL), then pick a defensive player, then pick an offensive linemen and end up adding three really good prospects. Seattle’s most likely outcome here is that the end up adding one and then they jump into the far riskier crapshoot that happens in rounds 3-onward.

It doesn’t guarantee by any means that the Cardinals will have the better draft class—Arizona has yet to shake their history of picking first round busts (Josh Rosen, Isaiah Simmons being really bad, Murray and Collins being underwhelming)—but they have a lot of buying power. If new-ish GM Monti Ossenfort is the guy they’ve needed all along then the Cardinals could turn around their fortunes even quicker than the Detroit Lions did from 2021-2023.

If not, then the Seahawks don’t have anything to worry about and Arizona will stay in the basement.

Who is the better team now?

There are too many unknowns for us to say—Macdonald, who the Cardinals will draft and how they’ll adjust to the NFL, many offensive line and defensive changes—but these teams were more evenly matched in 2023 than the full season indicates and the Cardinals have the better opportunity to improve through the draft, only if they don’t screw it up again.

This is a matchup that could come down to coaching, scheduling, and luck. Which is not where the Seahawks want to be—they just want to be clearly better than the Arizona Cardinals, as we all do—but admitting they had a problem is the first step towards recovery.