When did the Seahawks become a 'Super Bowl team' in your eyes?

Why Klint Kubiak is probably leaving and who should replace him?

Every week I take questions from the Super Joes subscribers. Join or upgrade by clicking here!

Scott M: I know the exact moment it happened for me, but at what point in the season did you FIRST think we had a great team this year, one that could compete for the super bowl?

I feel like this is a better question to put to the Seaside Joe community before I answer: When did you first think the Seahawks would have a Super Bowl caliber team this year?

Bret: If Kubiak is offered, and accepts, a head coaching position elsewhere, whom do you see as belonging on a top-three candidate list?

If Nagy isn’t offered a head coaching position, does he belong on the short list? What about Kevin Stefanski?

Nelly: Do you think the replacement would be someone with a similar offensive style or maybe go a different direction?

This was a common question and topic this week and something I ended up addressing a little bit on Wednesday.

#1 I would say that Klint Kubiak can only end up turning down offers or taking an offer. I don’t think there’s a chance that Kubiak gets no offer to become a head coach in 2026. He’s got it all: Nepotism, experience, youth, and success.

With as much moving as Kubiak has done in the last 5 years (5 different teams, a coordinator or coordinator-type job at every stop) I wouldn’t be surprised if he wants to pick a more permanent home and take the best offer. What’s the best offer going to be? Probably not Cleveland, Arizona, Las Vegas, or Tennessee. We just know the jobs that are open today, maybe 1 or 2 more become available. If he doesn’t go to the Giants or Ravens, maybe the Falcons is a reasonable compromise.

The Baltimore Ravens make a lot of sense for Klint Kubiak. His dad was the offensive coordinator for the Ravens in 2014 under Harbaugh and Mike Macdonald was an intern on the staff. He only left after one season because he took the Broncos head coaching job in 2015 and won the Super Bowl.

#2 The prediction business is a bad bet, but especially at this juncture. A guy like Stefanski makes a lot of sense, but only if he’s available.

What we did see is that the Seahawks were very unhappy with an inexperienced offensive staff in 2024 so they went with an experienced offensive staff in 2025.

Mike McCarthy had a top-5 offense from 2021-2023. He’s interviewing for head coaching jobs but would he take an offensive coordinator job again if he didn’t get one?

Todd Monken has been the offensive coordinator in Baltimore, so he’s connected to Macdonald, and it’s rumored that the Ravens were trying to make a change there when they fired Harbaugh. So if Monken doesn’t get a head coaching job, he could be a candidate.

Matt Nagy’s name was mentioned in the comments and he has the experience factor. I think he has struggled to prove himself as an above-average play caller either as a head coach in Chicago or the OC in Kansas City.

I have no prediction to offer this early in the process, except that I expect Kubiak to be gone and I would think his replacement is someone who has called an offense before (maybe at multiple different spots) and maybe not a hot shot wunderkind (like Nate Scheelhaase of the Rams). An in-house candidate like Rick Dennison would not be a popular choice with fans at age 67 without an amazing track record, but he does have a lot of experience.

Does Macdonald feel like Dennison or Justin Outten has learned enough about the players and the rest of the staff in 2025 to have offensive continuity in 2026? Because it’s going to be a risk to go hire an external candidate and then just expect all the offensive assistants to be happy with his methodology or decisions after 12 months of following Kubiak’s lead and believe everything he says. Do guys like John Benton or Dennison even stay if Kubiak leaves and he’s replaced with Matt Nagy or Mike McCarthy?

West Seattle Tim: Kliff Kingsbury just got released. At worst case, we would keep the OC alliteration game going.

The Seahawks have a special assistant offensive coach named Keller Chryst. This opening for alliteration can be solved with a minor name change.

Grant: What's up with Mathew Stafford's contract. I looked at OTC.com out of curiosity and see a two year deal with EIGHT void years! The last four void years (2031-2034) all just have $0 listed. What does a $0 void year even mean? How do void years work? Are NFL contracts getting so complicated that the intent of the salary cap is getting lost in the loopholes?

Void years is explained in this article, but generally it’s just taking a contract up to 5 years with several more dummy years and it would never go beyond 5 total because the max you can prorate a signing bonus is 5 years.

So for example:

• if it’s a 2-year contract you could add up to three void years to spread out the bonus over the maximum allowed five.

• if it’s a 4-year contract, you could add one void year to spread out the bonus

• if you sign a 3-year contract with a $25 million signing bonus, you might add 2 void years to make the hits $5 million per season

• Stafford doesn’t have any void years. He just has bonus options and OTC wrote “void” in those boxes you’re seeing when they probably shouldn’t have because it’s confusing-

So just so everyone knows, this is what Grant is looking at, but be forewarned that this is not how Stafford’s contract works whatsoever:

This is really all you need to see:

Here’s what is explained in the OTC commentary:

On April 29, 2025 Matt Stafford signed a renegotiated 2 year contract with the Los Angeles Rams worth $80 million in new money with $40 million guaranteed at signing. Stafford has a $40 million salary guarantee that will vest on the 5th day of the 2026 league year. The contract contains a series of team option bonuses (8 in total).

Notice the difference under bonus payments: Signing and Option.

• “Option” is not guaranteed bonus money. It’s an option.

• “Signing” is the prorated amount for a signing bonus. Because Stafford’s contract was 2 years, his bonus was spread out over two years: $22.6 million per year.

He had $40 million guaranteed when he signed the deal in 2025. He will have another $40 million guaranteed if the Rams don’t cut him or he doesn’t retire in 2026. Given his MVP odds, it seems like Stafford won’t be cut, so he could only retire.

I think the reason you’re seeing “VOID” through 2034 is that as OTC mentions, there are a bunch of options baked into the contract. I would assume none of this matters. As you can see, his cap number only goes down to 2027. If Stafford is set to return in 2026, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Rams come to terms on him with another revised contract that gives him security in 2027.

At his age, I think Stafford is just taking it year by year. The Rams have two first round picks in 2026 and could decide to draft a quarterback depending on what options they have in a class expected to be weak in the first round.

IdahoFred: The Panthers ambushed the Rams once before. Deja vu?

Even if a Panthers sweep is probably wishful thinking, it’s hard to dream up a bigger matchup nightmare for the Rams when it comes to playing an 8-9 team in the playoffs. This should be no less than annoying.

• Panthers DC Ejiro Evero worked for Sean McVay

• There are more players from the 2021 Rams Super Bowl team on Carolina’s roster than there is on L.A.’s roster!

• Matthew Stafford’s second-worst game of the season in terms of EPA/dropback was against Carolina (3 turnovers)

• That was when the Panthers were missing 3 starters on defense: Jaycee Horn, Tre’Von Moehrig, and Christian Rozeboom (it was the only game that Horn and Moehrig missed all season)

• All 3 players are back

• The Panthers are 4-0 when they rush for over 130 yards (they had 164 against the Rams)

• The Rams aren’t likely to have right guard Kevin Dotson, which is a problem against Derrick Brown

This feels like one of those games where we give 100 reasons why the Panthers will pull the upset and then Saturday arrives and Carolina gets steamrolled. Just accept it: The Panthers are a bad, bad team.

That being said…it’s the NFL. It’s not a 0% chance. It’s probably like a 30% chance at the bare minimum. That’s something.

Back to the first question:

at what point in the season did you FIRST think we had a great team this year?

I think I’ve been uncharacteristically (for me) high on Seattle’s Super Bowl chances for a while now. Searching Seaside Joe for some past examples from 2025, I remember this example from March when I wrote a reaction post to Michael Irvin saying that DeMarcus Lawrence wouldn’t win a Super Bowl with the Seahawks.

I wrote that Seattle’s defensive line/defense could be one of the franchise’s all-time greats:

This unit has the makings of the best front-seven that the Seahawks have had in years — three major additions in the last 18 months include Williams, Murphy, and Lawrence — and it won’t take 15 sacks for Lawrence to be a succesful signing at $14 million per year, which is outside of the top-20 for edge rushers.

Playing great run defense, dropping into coverage on occasion, pressuring the quarterback…and liking his teammates, that plus eight sacks would be a huge upgrade for the Seahawks.

I’m essentially saying that given a better team around him, Lawrence could be a star again without 15 sacks. He had a Pro Bowl season in 2025 with six sacks.

Here’s a great breakdown of the 49ers game by Josh Putnam:

In July, I highlighted some reasons why I was optimistic about the direction of the team since John Schneider replaced Pete Carroll as the main decision maker:

John Schneider might have more control of the Seattle Seahawks than any single person has over any single organization in the NFL. As to whether or not the Seahawks are better or worse off with Schneider, that can’t be answered until Seattle has played more games. Last season was the first without Pete Carroll (who might have also been the NFL’s most powerful person at one point or another and he won a Super Bowl) and the Seahawks went 10-7.

But just in the last seven months, Seattle has already replaced the offensive coordinator (and many offensive assistants), traded Geno Smith and DK Metcalf, signed Cooper Kupp and Demarcus Lawrence, and added 11 rookies via the draft, including nine on offense.

But I could probably go back further, all the way to February 12th when I was sharing what my idea of a perfect Seahawks offseason would include, especially trading DK Metcalf and parting with Geno Smith. When Schneider traded both players within days of each other in March, I was extremely excited for Seattle’s immediate future.

I was laying out reasons for the Seahawks to move on from DK and Geno for months prior to those trades, so if nothing else it affirmed MY ideas for what would make the team better: More cap space, more draft capital, and less commitment to a plan that was PROVEN to not work in Seattle.

That doesn’t mean that MY IDEAS are right, but to answer your question “When did YOU think that the Seahawks were a Super Bowl team?” well what else would any person say other than ‘I started believing in the team when they started doing what I wanted them to do’?

Mike Macdonald’s 2024

You might say that a belief should have kicked in at the end of 2024 because the Seahawks had the 5th-best scoring defense over the second half of last season. So a fan could have been really high on the Macdonald signing, and many were, but it didn’t feel like much more than a theory until Seattle started locking in after their 2024 bye week.

If the Seahawks had allowed one fewer touchdown in the second half last year, they would have had the best scoring defense in the last eight games.

So if Macdonald could just continue that streak on defense in 2025, the team would only need a better offense to challenge the NFC for the number one seed. I was high on trading Geno for a third round pick when he had contract demands, but never claimed that Sam Darnold would be a franchise savior. I just loved the fact that he’s younger, cost less guaranteed money, and shouldn’t be any worse than Geno.

I’ve gotten the Darnold that I expected. I’ve gotten the Klint Kubiak and Jaxon Smith-Njigba that I expected.

I can honestly say that very few things about the 2025 Seattle Seahawks have surprised me other than Riq Woolen’s second half resurgence; Nick Emmanwori’s immediate impact; and the breakout seasons of Drake Thomas and Ty Okada.

The Seahawks 14-3 record and number one seed only surprises me for 2 reasons:

• It’s hard to earn the number one seed, no matter how good your team is

• Seattle won some close games at the end of the season that necessitated a pinch of good luck…no matter how good your team is

We know that “the best team” doesn’t always win the Super Bowl and similarly “the best team” doesn’t always get the number one seed. If one play changes against the Rams, maybe Seattle doesn’t get the number one seed.

If the Seahawks don’t get the number one seed…well, we’ll find out how this story ends in a matter of weeks.

A less annoying, more specific answer to your question is that I didn’t gain this amount of confidence that I currently have until the Seahawks beat the Rams. THAT CERTAINLY REPRESENTS A SEISMIC SHIFT IN MY 2025 EXPECTATIONS.

And the Seahawks were down 16 points in the fourth quarter! Expectations changed in a manner of game minutes.

Largely because Super Bowl odds change immensely when you win the division + earn the number one seed and that win really pushed Seattle into this opportunity when a loss would have all but ended it. So I’m going to go with December 18th as the night I became a true believer…but this season hasn’t really surprised me given that I became very optimistic in March when the team traded Geno and DK.

More Super Joes answers to come!

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