Seattle Seahawks' new-look offense ranked below 22 others around NFL

The Seattle Seahawks won 10 games last season, but if the Pete Carroll firing taught us anything it's that this franchise is no longer satisfied with just being "good enough" to post a winning record and compete for a playoff spot, but not actually be a legitimate contender.

And so, even though they claim it wasn't what they planned for the offseason, the front office decided to effectively blow up their offense and start over from scratch. The short version is that Sam Darnold has replaced Geno Smith, Klint Kubiak has replaced Ryan Grubb and Cooper Kupp has replaced DK Metcalf. The Seahawks also scored some upgrades at left guard (Grey Zabel) and tight end (Elijah Arroyo). However, most national media analysts don't seem to think much of this new-look offense.

According to a ranking of all 32 offenses around the NFL by Brent Sobleski at Bleacher Report, Seattle's offense is just the 23rd best in the league going into the 2025 season. That puts them in the same territory as the Carolina Panthers, Jacksonville Jaguars and the Las Vegas Raiders.

"At this juncture, the Seattle Seahawks offense feels somewhat makeshift... The investment in Sam Darnold makes sense on paper, even if he feels like a heavy regression candidate after last year's outstanding performance, especially with his late-season collapse... Darnold may not regress to his previous bust status, but it'll likely be hard to repeat last season's success."

This blurb hits the same notes that most analysts have when justifying their low rankings for this team. We feel most of the crowd is both underrating the other 16 starts Darnold had last year and also overrating what Geno Smith got up to - specifically, a level of performance that was a lot lower than what Darnold was putting on tape for most of the season.

Darnold might regress a little without Justin Jefferson to throw to or Kevin O'Connell to dial up the plays, but we still expect him to post better numbers than Smith would have in his place - especially given the big new receiving threat at tight end - a tool that Geno never had during his time in Seattle.

Clearly most NFL media disagrees. All we can do is continue to die on this hill - at least until the first month of the season is over when we can start to really evaluate how it's going.