Seahawks tease special 'rivalry' jerseys they'll debut against Rams

And why Brett Kollmann thinks Seattle is better than everyone else thinks they are

The NFL has partnered with Nike to make more money, which in this case means that all 32 teams will be wearing specially designed “rivalry” jerseys at various points over the next four seasons. This season, the NFC West and AFC East were tabbed as the two divisions/eight teams to wear rivalry jerseys and on Friday the Seahawks announced when their versions will be revealed with a teaser of the design that suggests an accentuation of action green.

Reveal date: August 28th.

Bonus Article: Why G and C competitions both come down to the same player

The Seahawks and the rest of the NFC West, as well as the four AFC East teams, will be the first eight teams participating in the league's new Rivalries program. Each team will wear a uniform that is unique to and inspired by their local community and rooted in the history of the city. The new uniform will be worn once during the season, at a home game, against a division rival.

The Seahawks will wear their rivalry jerseys in Week 16 on Thursday Night Football against the Rams, and they will also face off against the 49ers wearing their own rivalry jerseys in the Week 18 finale. If you believe that uniforms have any impact on results, as many fans tend to say they do, those are very important games. The Arizona Cardinals are also supposedly using their one rivalry date against Seattle.

Strangely, no NFC West announcement did not involve the Seattle Seahawks.

The idea that Seattle could lean into action green is not just a guess based on the teaser, but also from the Seahawks specially-designed logo made for the announcement:

I don’t know anything about graphic design, but the logos seem a bit minimalist and faded, perhaps suggesting that the NFL will let these rivalry jerseys sit out in the sun for a couple of months prior to the game.

Jersey announcements are typically at the bottom of the barrel for my Seahawks interest levels, but I realize they’re more important to some fans and in this case it means that more than half of Seattle’s NFC West games will involve this “rivalry” uniform for some reason. Now you know.

Bonus Article: Why G and C competitions both come down to the same player

Seahawks get first compliment of 2025

Apparently the NFL has hired podcaster Brett Kollmann and given him an official platform to talk about the league. During his show on Thursday highlighting “4 teams that are better than you think” (link queued up to the right place here), Kollmann dedicated one of those spots to the Seattle Seahawks.

“(Vikings HC/OC) Kevin O’Connell runs a lot of what Gary Kubiak did because the coaching tree that he came out of was heavily influenced by Kubiak. It’s a lot of under center, a lot of deep play action passes, and Sam Darnold was exceptional at that last year. If you’re looking at Y/A on play action passes from under center, hard PA fakes, chucking it deep, Darnold’s Y/A was 9.8 and that was fourth best in the NFL on a large sample size. Only Jared Goff and Matthew Stafford, two other QBs who played for O’Connell, had more under center play action throws than Darnold.”

I touched on Darnold’s success with play action on Wednesday.

Kollmann goes onto say that the Seahawks won’t be doing nearly as much of the “shots to the X on the boundary” throws as they used or that other teams run, which made DK Metcalf (who didn’t have a good contested catch rate anyway) expendable and players like Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Cooper Kupp more valuable.

“You have to do a little bit more work to scheme up space to make those completions high probability, but that’s what they do really well. You see a lot of deep crossing routes, deep overs, post routes, post corners, corner posts, stuff that has more of a lateral element to it or a horizontal element to it. Rather than being a pure vertical route. The reason for that is that if you’re running a route that is right to left or left to right, you’re crossing the safety’s face and if the play caller is doing his job and gives the backside corner a reason to step down while crossing the safety’s face, then the entire deep third window is available to you. That’s a higher probability completion than trying to loft the ball deep into a shoe box.”

This means that Kubiak is, in a way, more important than Darnold. Because Darnold has a more extensive history as a disappointing quarterback than a list of games when he successfully carried a team to victory, that’s probably what Seattle is looking for right now by pairing him with Kubiak. And then even if Kubiak is successful and leaves in a couple of years, hopefully by then Darnold has picked up on what the coaching staff has taught him about manipulating coverages.

This system also helps the Seahawks get more value out of a receiver like JSN as a number one target because he’s not fast, he’s not going to win contested catches very often, but he is good at manipulating defensive backs to create space for uncontested opportunities. Kupp too, but the partnership with him is not intended to last nearly as long as JSN’s future in Seattle.

Kollmann then highlights that draft picks like Christian Haynes make a lot more sense for Kubiak than they did a year ago with the old staff.

“I see an offense coming together that makes sense. They took Grey Zabel, who was one of the better wide zone blockers in this entire class at any offensive line position. He’s excellent in wide zone. If you’re looking at Christian Haynes, he was the best wide zone blocker in the 2024 class among interior offensive linemen but they didn’t really run that last year. They weren’t a wide zone team. I didn’t understand why the took Haynes if they didn’t run wide zone. Now they’re going to be running an offense that fits their guards and their center and their tackles. Everything just makes sense now. I’m not worried about the Seahawks putting points on the board.”

Defensively, Kollmann says he believes that injuries played a part in their first-half struggles because they were so much better in the second half of the season. “Their d-line pass rush win rate went from 22nd to 9th in the second half of the year when everybody was healthy.”

The biggest issue, as Kollmann sees it, is the lack of a dedicated nose tackle because Seattle has so many 3-tech bodies at 310 lbs but no huge, well-established run stuffers. The lighter front helps with the pass rush but hurts against the run. I don’t think a player like Christian Wilkins would help their weight problem, but his specialty is run defense so that’s something.

All told, Kollmann calls the Seahawks a playoff team:

“You have a new QB, new OC, new receivers, ideally a resurgent OL, and a defense that played really good football last year. What’s not to love? Everything fits really, really well. They should be a playoff team but they don’t get talked about that way. Nobody talks about Seattle. I don’t get it because it’s a really, really good team.”

Now we can’t say that nobody in the media likes the Seahawks. The NFL’s own dedicated podcaster does.

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