Russell Wilson and Matt Hasselbeck are two of the best quarterbacks in Seattle Seahawks history. Everyone, not just 12s, knows their names. Wilson, of course, is still playing, though not yet at the same level he was with Seattle. Maybe 2023 will be a bounce-back year for him for his new team, the Denver Broncos.
Hasselbeck was a starter in Seattle from 2001 through 2010. He led Seattle to its first Super Bowl appearance where the Seahawks were robbed of a victory by the referees (it still stings!). But even though Wilson and Hasselbeck were the main starters, at times their backups were good as well.
Plus, everybody loves the backup quarterback, right? A fan gets mad at the starter and screams to put the backup in all the time. It doesn't normally happen, of course. But if that did happen over the seasons for the Seahawks, the five guys that follow would have been capable fill-ins.
Five best backup QBs in Seattle Seahawks history
Seahawks backup QB No. 5: John Friesz
Freisz was a backup for four years in Seattle from 1995 through 1998. He started his career with the San Diego (now Los Angeles, obviously) Chargers after being a sixth round draft pick out of Idaho in 1990. In his second year with the Chargers, Freisz started every game for 4-12 San Diego. After spending a season with Washington in 1994, Friesz signed as a free agent with Seattle prior to the 1995 season.
Friesz joined the Seahawks in probably the teams overall worse decade of football. In 1994, Seattle was 6-10 and then went 8-8 in Friesz first year as the backup. Rick Mirer was the starter, but Friesz was able to start three games when Mirer was hurt. Though Seattle went just 1-2 in Friesz's starts, his raw number were better than Mirer's on a per-start basis. While Mirer threw 13 touchdown passes, he was picked off 20 times. Friesz threw 6 touchdowns and just 3 picks.
In 1996, Freisz backed up Mirer again, but Freisz saw action in eight games and started six of them. Once again, he was much better than Mirer. Seattle went 7-9 in 1996, but in the games Freisz started, the team went 4-2. Freisz threw 8 touchdowns passes against 4 interception and his quarterback rating was 30 points higher than Mirer.
Friesz played two more seasons in Seattle and backed up Warren Moon. He only saw action in two games after 1996. Still, he finished his time in Seattle with a record of 6-5 with 16 touchdowns passes and 12 interceptions and led 3 4th quarter comebacks.
Seahawks backup QB No. 4: Jon Kitna
Jon Kitna picked up where Freisz left off, literally. In fact, the two overlapped in 1997 and 1998. Both quarterbacks backed up Warren Moon during those seasons. The difference is that Kitna began his career as an undrafted free agent with Seattle while Friesz was several years into his career when he joined the Seahawks. Plus. Kitna was the better of the two quarterbacks.
Kitna was a strong-armed quarterback who played at a small college, Central Washington. He didn't expect to be drafted and wasn't, even though he had the physical skill to play in the NFL. Kitna was signed after Seahawks head coach Dennis Erickson went to the school to give his nephew a tryout and Kitna was the quarterback throwing the passes.
In Kitna's first season with Seattle, he played in only three games but started one of them. Erickson didn't hold him back either as Kitna went 23 of 37 for 283 yards in a 22-21 Seahawks victory over the Raiders. 1998 was the season that was a turning point, though, for the future of Kitna.
Seattle, the example of mediocrity in the 1990s had another 8-8 season in 1998 and Warren Moon began as the starter at quarterback. But when Moon was injured, Kitna started the final five games of the season and Seattle went 3-2 in those starts. Kitna threw 7 touchdown passes versus 7 interceptions in those starts, but Kitna proved he could lead an offense. In 1999, Kitna was named the full-time starter for Seattle and did that in 1999 and 2000. Kitna left Seattle after 2000 and bounced around the league a bit, but lasted through the 2011 season and finished with 29,745 career passing yards and 124 starts.
Seahawks backup QB No. 3: Seneca Wallace
Seneca Wallace played with Seattle from 2005 through 2009, but just to show how there was still a bit of a stigma when it came to how executives viewed African-American quarterbacks, most teams saw Wallace more as a wide receiver than a quarterback because of his athletic ability. (Wallace even played some wide receiver for Seattle, but there was no doubt he was ever going to make the move full-time to the position if the starting quarterback got hurt.)
Thankfully, now having African-Americans start at the NFL level is no longer an issue, and the league and many teams are the better for it.
Wallace played the last two years of college at Iowa State and while his touchdown-to-interception ratio wasn't great, it was more due to the lack of talent around him than his ability. This ability became very well known during Wallace's 2008 season when he started eight games due to starter Matt Hasselbeck being injured on two different occasions. The team went just 3-5 under Wallace that season, but he had a spectacular touchdown-to-interception ratio of 11 to 2.
This ratio actually led the NFL, as did Wallace's interception-per-pass percentage of only 1.2 percent. If a backup's job is to come in and not have the ball turned over and keep the offense moving, Wallace did this extremely well. He also threw a 90-yard touchdown pass to Koren Robinson in Week 9 and this still stands as the longest touchdown pass in Seahawks history.
Wallace left after the 2009 season and played three more seasons - two with the Cleveland Browns and one with the Green Bay Packers. Wallace finished his time in Seattle with 14 starts and threw 25 touchdown passes against 14 interceptions with a passer rating of a decent 83.1.
Seahawks backup QB No. 2: Geno Smith
This might seem like I am cheating a bit, but just like with Kitna, Smith started off as a backup in Seattle, of course. Plus, when Smith took starter Russell Wilson's place for three games in 2021, he might have done well enough to change the course of how the franchise would go. Mind you, if Russell Wilson had not reportedly gone to Seahawks chairperson Jody Allen to try to get head coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider fired, maybe Smith still doesn't become the starter.
Smith backed Wilson up for three seasons, from 2019 through 2021. In 2019, he saw zero snaps, but this was common when Wilson was the starter as he played every down of every game from 2012 through 2019. In 2020, Smith saw action in one game, a Seattle blowout of the New York Giants in Week 14. Then in 2021, something unexpected happened; Russell Wilson got hurt.
In Week 5 against the Los Angeles Rams and with Seattle's offense struggling badly, Wilson threw a pass and hurt his finger. Smith came in and played most of the second half and looked in full control of the offense. He had a touchdown pass and an interception, but Seattle was down by so much that Smith had to force a bad throw or two. Smith started the next three games and the team went 1-2, but Smith seemed to not be allowed to do too much.
But Wilson was traded in the offseason of 2022, of course, and Geno Smith became the starter. Whatever he had done in 2021 gave the Seattle coaching staff enough confidence to let Smith be a bit freer in his play. Smith was so efficient during his first year back as a full-time starter since 2014 that he led the NFL in completion percentage and won the Comeback Player of the Year Award.
Seahawks backup QB No. 1: Dave Krieg
Dave Krieg went to Milton so no one really knew much about him when he joined the NFL as an undrafted player in 1980. Heck, Krieg's college doesn't even exist anymore as it went under two years after Krieg left the school. Maybe they thought, "Well, Dave Krieg is the best we can do so I guess we will close now." If they thought that, they were at least correct about Krieg.
Krieg started off as the third-string QB for Seattle and saw only a handful of snaps in his first season and didn't complete any passes. In 1981, Krieg played well enough in practice that he became the main backup to starter Jim Zorn. Zorn had been the starter since the franchise's inception in 1976 and had led the team to a winning record in its third season with another in its fourth. But after a disappointing 1980 year, Zorn began to slowly fall out of favor. Plus, Krieg had played pretty decently in mop-up duty in 1981 after Zorn was injured late in the year.
By 1982, Krieg had overtaken Zorn as the starter and stayed there until he injured his thumb. Zorn then regained the starting job, but in the last game of the season Krieg came in for Zorn and led Seattle to a come from behind victory over the Denver Broncos. Zorn began 1983 as the starter but struggled again and Krieg took over in Week 8 and Krieg played so well that he led the Seahawks to the AFC Championship game.
Krieg remained the starter at the beginning of 1984 and stayed there through the 1990 season. He made three Pro Bowls (1984, 1988, and 1989), and he is currently third on Seattle's all-time list for passing yards, second in victories (70), second in touchdown passes (195), and second in fourth quarter comebacks (16). That's pretty good for a guy who was a backup for a few years and came from a college that no longer exists.