3 ways the NFL screwed Seattle Seahawks with 2024 schedule

One might think that if the NFL had a care the league might have schemed to give the Seattle Seahawks a bit of a break in the schedule since Seattle has a new head coach. That is not realistic, of course, but one can hope. Instead, the league gave Seattle the kind of Jekyll and Hyde schedule that could sink the team past the bye week.

The first part of the season could allow Seattle to get off to a very good start. Seattle plays four of its first six games at home and three of the first five games should be against teams who are not ready for the playoffs. Starting with the Denver Broncos and home and the New England Patriots on the road should be a relatively easy start. Relatively being the key word.

Seattle actually gets a bit of a break in that they will host the Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, and San Francisco 49ers at home before the bye week. Unfortunately, that is where the schedule starts to screw the Seahawks. Here are three reasons why.

Four of the Seahawks' final six games are on the road

The issue is not only that Seattle will 66 percent of their final games away from Lumen Field but the way the games are arranged. There is a difference between playing away and then coming home and then away again in consecutive weeks. But the schedule has Seattle saying goodbye to 12s after Week 12 and not coming home until Week 15.

Seattle then gets back-to-back games at Lumen Field before traveling to cold Chicago to take on the Bears in Week 17 and then away to face the Rams in Los Angeles to end the regular season. That is a lot of traveling for a team that will have already flown quite a bit in recent weeks.

Seattle gets stretched late in the season

Besides playing away so much, after Seattle's final home game of the season in Week 16, the Seahawks will have an extremely short week before flying to Chicago. Seattle faces three NFC North teams in a row, oddly enough, in the Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, and Bears, but while the Vikings might be the easiest of those teams Seattle then has to immediately prepare for Chicago.

Having Thursday Night Football games so late in the season for any team is simply a money-making decision for the NFL. The season is already longer than it used to be and therefore more tiring but to have teams have lass rest in the next-to-last week of the year is somewhat cruel.

Seattle goes through the NFC West grind late

In the past few seasons, the Seahawks have faced an NFC West rival twice before Week 9 of the year. This means Seattle has a decent idea of where they stand against the rest of the division and what they need to do on a head-to-head basis to either separate themselves from the rest of the teams or what they need to do to make up ground. In 2022, for instance, Seattle played three games against NFC West rivals in the first half of the season.

In 2024, however, Seattle only plays one game against another NFC West team before the bye week. They don't play any NFC West team until the sixth game of the year. This matches 2020 as the latest week to play an intra-division game since 2014. In the last two seasons, Seattle has played an NFC West rival within the first two weeks of the year.

This might not be a huge deal for a team with a head coach who has been with them for a number of years, but new head coach Mike Macdonald probably wants to get an up-close look at how his unit matches up against other teams in the division. Macdonald won't truly get an idea about the 2024 team until after the bye week.

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