The Seattle Seahawks underwent major changes to their offense this offseason as they swapped out Geno Smith, DK Metcalf, and Tyler Lockett for Sam Darnold and Cooper Kupp. Their defense will remain largely the same, however, as their top eight leaders in snaps played will be back in 2025.
Seattle also swapped offensive coordinators, replacing Ryan Grubb with Klint Kubiak in a move that has seemingly revitalized the offense. The early results have been great as the Seahawks' offense, particularly their running game, which was a sore spot a season ago, has looked great in the preseason.
Furthermore, the offense has looked very entertaining - averaging 422.5 yards and 28.0 points per game. Despite their production early on, Seattle was recently named as one of the bottom-five teams in terms of watchability.
Recent rankings list Seahawks as bottom-five team in watchability
The Seahawks have been very entertaining to watch during the preseason. The offseason additions of Darnold and Kubiak have been very promising over the first two games.
While the real test won't come until Sept. 7 when the San Francisco 49ers come to Seattle in Week 1, the early results have given fans plenty to be excited about. Despite the strong play, the Seahawks were ranked as a bottom-five team to watch in 2025.
Ben Solak of ESPN ranked the Seahawks 29th in terms of watchability, writing:
"Both offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak and quarterback Sam Darnold delivered some of the greatest watchability of last season. It was Kubiak in the early season in New Orleans, when he had Derek Carr dropping historic offensive efficiency throughout September. And it was Darnold over the course of the year, when he turned an early-season curiosity into a season-long reclamation story before the bill came due in the postseason. If Kubiak and Darnold can reconjure some of their collective magic, the Seahawks should be quite intriguing. But we don't know for certain that Darnold has fully turned the corner into competent quarterbackhood, so the floor hurts them here. Teams with elite defenses -- of which the Seahawks might be included -- but non-functional quarterbacking are far less watchable than we think. See: Jets, New York (2024)."
Despite a strong season in 2024, pundits have continued to undervalue the Seahawks heading into the new season. While wins and losses are far more important than watchability as some of the NFL's greatest teams haven't been the most entertaining, Solak's reasoning doesn't make much sense.
He acknowledges that Seattle has plenty of upside to be entertaining; however, he still ranks them as the fourth-least watchable team in the league. Docking the team for the unknowns is understandable, but it appears they were marked off far too much.