No one can be too sure how the Seattle Seahawks 2024 season is going to go. With Pete Carroll in charge for the last 14 years, 12s could assume the team would not be awful. That also led to frustration as the team was no longer a real threat to win a championship either.
Changes needed to be made this offseason, and those changes were made. Carroll and almost all of his coaching staff were relieved of their duties. Seattle hired Mike Macdonald as the new head coach, and Ryan Grubb was named offensive coordinator.
The hope is that with the talent Seattle already had on its roster, the new schemes on offense and defense will allow the talent to be more productive and efficient. Preseason won't tell 12s anything. Seattle is a true unknown in 2024, but these could be the worst-case scenarios.
Nightmare scenario No. 1 - Seattle Seahawks are 2-7 at the bye week
You know the adage, right? On any given Sunday, any NFL team can beat another NFL team. Plus, there is almost always hope a team will exceed expectations before a season starts. In the last two years, Seattle has gone 9-8. Mediocre records, of course, but not bad ones. Seattle plays a third-place schedule in 2024, and while maybe the team's roster is better than in 2023, the other third-place teams from last year might be better too.
Seattle does not have an easy schedule. The first game will feature first-year head coach Mike Macdonald against veteran head coach Sean Payton. Payton's team might be better prepared to challenge Macdonald's defense than Macdonald's team is ready to take advantage of a rookie quarterback potentially starting in Denver.
In Week 2, the Seahawks travel to play the New England Patriots and that should be a win. Then Seattle has back-to-back tough games against the Miami Dolphins and Detroit Lions. The New York Giants might not be great, but they might be starting Drew Lock at quarterback and Lock could be looking for revenge against a Seahawks organization that treated him pretty well.
This is when the real issues arrive. Between Weeks 6 and 9, Seattle plays the San Francisco 49ers, a likely much-improved Falcons team in Atlanta, the Buffalo Bills, and then the Los Angeles Rams. The only games that Seattle should definitely win before the bye week are the ones against the Patriots and Giants. A 2-7 start is certainly possible.
Seahawks' gambles on backend of the defense don't pay off
12s need to be able to trust the vision of general manager John Schneider and the coaching staff, of course. This is especially true this season because Pete Carroll is no longer in charge of the roster and the team's on-field product. With Carroll, the team and fans knew what to expect - good or bad. 12s could assume Seattle would take a certain player in the draft or have the same tendencies on defense.
The defense should definitely look different in 2024. Mike Macdonald's scheme is designed to allow for good linebacker coverage, something that the Seahawks have not had the last several years, and for safeties to be interchangeable and versatile. The plan works and we saw it work with the Baltimore Ravens the last two seasons. Baltimore also had good players that made the scheme work.
This offseason, Seattle let linebackers Bobby Wagner and Jordyn Brooks leave in free agency, and the team waived Quandre Diggs and Jamal Adams. To replace them Seattle brought in linebackers Jerome Baker and Tyrel Dodson and safeties Rayshawn Jenkins and K'Von Wallace. Especially with the linebackers, Seattle is taking a big chance that the players will be a bit better than their career numbers imply.
Dodson was very good in 2023, his first year being given a chance to start many games, but he missed 17 percent of his tackle attempts in his first two seasons. His two passes broken up last year were his first since 2020. He could be a mediocre player for Seattle in 2024 while being the green dot on the defense.
Safety Jenkins has always been an inconsistent tackler. He whiffed on 10.8 percent of his tackle attempts last year, a decent number, but missed 17.6 percent of the time in 2022. Seahawks fans saw Seattle miss far too many missed tackles in the last couple of years, and Jenkins might not help fix that problem.
Mike Macdonald makes too many first-year mistakes
No coach is perfect, of course. A first-year head coach can have even more issues. He doesn't know what he doesn't know. How quickly he can learn from his mistakes could decide how successful a team is in his first year. This goes far beyond challenges to officiating, but a head coach in his first season has to rely on his past success as an assistant coach to drive his direction.
Macdonald might have another issue, too. He has not had to deal with a team potentially having a losing season, and how to fix little things along the way to make sure that does not happen. He has been fortunate enough to work for two coaches, Jim Harbaugh and John Harbaugh, whose teams were not only barely successful but championship contenders. The last time Macdonald worked on a team that did not have a winning season was in 2016 when Macdonald had the title of Defensive Assistant Coach.
In other words, Macdonald has gotten used to working from being ahead and not having to react to turmoil. Whether he can take a team that is struggling early in a season, correct whatever the concerns are, and shift the team into a winner is unknown. Macdonald has never had to do that while in a leadership position.
The chances are that Macdonald will be fine. He will implement a scheme that gives NFC West rivals problems. Seattle hopefully has the correct players to run the scheme, but we might not know that until the bye week of 2024. By that time, the team could already be planning for 2025.