The underappreciated greatness of the 2025 Seattle Seahawks
This is one of the best teams of all time, but getting there took uncommon trust
It’s tough to underestimate a team that just won the Super Bowl, but I don’t think the football world appreciates just how dominant the 2025 Seattle Seahawks were.
This first came to mind after running the 2025 Seahawks numbers through my historical power rankings system. This system uses over 20 parameters to grade NFL teams on a 1-100 scale. Mike Macdonald’s squad ended up with a 93.30 score. For perspective, that rates the 2025 Seahawks as the 16th greatest team in NFL history and easily rates ahead of the 2013 Seahawks (87.66) as the top team in franchise history.
A deeper look at the numbers bears this ranking out. This team excelled in every manner possible.
Seattle’s 14-3 regular season mark set a franchise record for regular season wins. The Seahawks were tied for the best record in the NFL despite playing in what was indisputably the toughest division in the league. Seattle’s three losses were by a combined total of nine points.
The Seahawks also defeated two of their division foes in the playoffs. Their 35-point win over San Francisco in the Wild Card round was tied with Seattle’s Super Bowl XLVIII victory over Denver for the biggest playoff point differential in Seattle history. It is only the 26th time that a team has won a playoff game by 35 or more points and is the first time that’s happened since the 2014 season. To do this after losing to San Francisco in Week 1 and winning a 13-3 slugfest over the 49ers in Week 18 speaks volumes for the Seahawks ability to step up in the postseason.
Defensive brilliance
Next up is Macdonald’s specialty. This may sound blasphemous to some Seahawks fans, but The Dark Side defense was every bit as good as the Legion of Boom.
First in points allowed
First by a solid margin in expected points added
First in points per drive
Tied for first in adjusted net yards per pass attempt
Second in scoring drive percentage
Tied for second in yards per play
Third in hurry rate
Fifth in red zone scoring percentage
Sixth in opponent turnover drive rate
Sixth in pass pressure rate
Seattle’s offense wasn’t quite at the level of its defense, but this platoon was still one of the top offenses in the league. The Seahawks offense ranked third in points scored, second in net yards per pass attempt, tied for fourth in offensive yards per play, sixth in drive success rate and ninth in passing offense EPA.
If these two areas weren’t enough, Seattle’s special teams ranked second in overall EPA.
Using the credibility firewall
The stats are quite powerful, but the truth is this team will be remembered for even more than that. This stems from the organization’s response to the 2024 season.
Seattle barely missed the playoffs with a 10-7 record in that campaign. The Seahawks ended on a strong note, going 6-2 after starting the season 4-5.
Most franchises in this situation would have been content with a double-digit win total. Most rookie head coaches would have been thrilled. The collective response would have been to try to add to the existing base and build upon that mark.
That wasn’t the case with Macdonald and General Manager John Schneider. Macdonald wanted his team to have a certain identity football-wise, and he was frustrated that the 2024 squad just didn’t have that identity.
What Macdonald and Schneider did next brings to mind how Hall of Fame baseball manager Earl Weaver would react whenever his Baltimore Orioles had a strong season.
Weaver figured that whenever he was in that situation, he had more leeway to take chances. If he decided to make a controversial move, people would say, hey, this guy knows what he’s doing. If that move took some time to pan out, Weaver would have a credibility firewall to keep him from taking too much heat.
This is exactly the approach Weaver used with the Cal Ripkin Jr. situation at the start of Ripkin’s career. Ripkin had atrocious batting numbers in his first 40 games with the club and there was a lot of pressure on Weaver to bench him.
Weaver might have been forced to yield to that pressure in many situations, but his Orioles squads won 100+ games in the 1979 and 1980 campaigns. It meant Weaver had that credibility firewall and could stick to his guns when it came to keeping Ripkin in the lineup. The stubbornness panned out when Ripkin was named AL Rookie of the Year at the end of the 1982 season.
Macdonald and Schneider saw that they had some of that leeway due to the double-digit win total. They decided to use that benefit of the doubt to go after Sam Darnold.
Concentrate on what a player can do
The Vikings gave up on Darnold even after they posted a 14-3 mark with him under center in 2024. The Minnesota brain trust didn’t see that as enough. They looked at Darnold’s relatively high interception rate (something he’s struggled with throughout his career) and terrible performance against the Rams in the 2024 NFC Wild Card game as indicators of an unacceptable ceiling level.
Macdonald and Schneider saw this situation and took the Bill Walsh approach. Walsh got frustrated when his scouts would concentrate their analysis on what a player couldn’t do. He would remind them that their job was to tell Walsh what a player can do so that Walsh and his coaches could build a gameplan around those talents.
Macdonald and Schneider took some heat for the move, but keep in mind that Darnold was a superb college quarterback who led the nation in YPA and YPC in his sophomore season at USC. Much of Darnold’s subpar NFL performances could be attributed to playing on teams that were mediocre at best and atrocious at worse. In his one pro season in a strong offense with a skilled play caller (his 2024 campaign), Darnold threw for 4,319 yards and 35 touchdowns.
Seattle provided Darnold with the same caliber of surrounding talent and play calling that Minnesota had. He responded with some of the best passing numbers of his career, but it’s what happened when things went south that really turned this into a season worth remembering.
Trust requires faith
The real key to Darnold’s 2025 success was how Macdonald trusted him following Darnold’s Week 11 implosion against the Rams.
That game was the first time Darnold had faced Los Angeles since the Wild Card debacle. The rematch didn’t go any better. Darnold threw four interceptions and posted a dismal 2.25 adjusted yards per attempt. He looked every bit as rattled in that contest as he did in the Wild Card matchup and seemed to show that the Vikings were correct in their assessment of Darnold’s ceiling.
A lot of coaches would have fallen prey to their fears and lost their faith in Darnold at that point. Macdonald decided to go a different route by channeling the Bud Grant approach to kickers. Grant said if you have a good kicker, you can trust that player even after he has a bad game because you know he is a good kicker and even the best players are going to have bad games.
Fred Cox had to kick in some of the worst weather conditions in the NFL and thus had his share of bad games, yet from 1967-1976 he had the eighth highest field goal conversion rate in regular and postseason games (per Stathead). Cox did what he needed to do more than often enough to earn Grant’s trust and that allowed Grant to have faith in Cox through the tough times.
Macdonald showed that type of trust with Darnold. The Seahawks didn’t scale their passing game plan back in the Week 12 matchup against Tennessee. They instead allowed Darnold to continue to aggressively attack like he had all season. This led to Darnold going 11 for 17 for 195 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions in the first half and first drive of the third quarter. By that point, Seattle had a 23-3 lead, at which point they scaled things back on the way to a 30-24 win.
The Seahawks carried this trust over to the two other games against the Rams. Darnold completed 47 of 70 passes for 616 yards, five touchdowns and two interceptions in those contests.
Darnold brought Seattle back from a 30-14 fourth quarter deficit in the regular season game and led the game winning touchdown drive in overtime. He then went toe-to-toe with NFL MVP Matthew Stafford in the scoreboard shootout that was the Divisional playoff game. These two contests illustrated Darnold’s true ceiling.
Don’t let fear rule your personnel decisions
It sounds so easy to have trust in your players, but how many teams would have screwed this up? The Vikings certainly did. They just couldn’t deal with Darnold’s occasional bad performances. Justin Jefferson understood this, which is why he publicly stated that Minnesota could have made it to the Super Bowl with Darnold at quarterback.
That statement clarified that the Darnold situation rattled the Vikings. It was almost certainly part of why Minnesota fired General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah in January, but reading between the lines of this article at The Athletic suggests that the coaching staff may have been more to blame for throwing in the towel on Darnold.
Whoever’s fault it was, it was clear Minnesota overreacted to the Wild Card loss against the Rams. They let myriad fears rule their personnel decisions instead of keeping the faith. Many teams do this, and it’s a big part of why they fail.
Schneider and Macdonald knew better than to do that. They looked past those doubts and instead had confidence in what Darnold could do for their club. It led to one of the greatest seasons in NFL history, but the Seahawks low-key approach means that it’s a performance that may not be recognized for its true greatness until the passage of time inevitably clarifies it.