Big Ray: Why it was a ‘discovery mode’ season for Seahawks

Jan 4, 2025, 6:09 PM

Seattle Seahawks defense Arizona Cardinals James Conner 2024...

The Seattle Seahawks swarm Arizona running back James Conner in a 2024 game. (Norm Hall/Getty Images)

(Norm Hall/Getty Images)

Seattle Sports

The Seattle Seahawks will fall short of the playoffs in Mike Macdonald’s first season at the helm. That was made official when the Los Angeles Rams locked up the NFC West crown last weekend.

But that doesn’t mean the 2024 campaign wasn’t a success.

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For one, the Seahawks can finish 10-7 with a victory over the Rams in Sunday’s season finale. That would give Seattle its first 10-win season since 2020, and it would mark a one-win improvement over the 9-8 campaigns of 2022 and 2023 under Pete Carroll.

Furthermore, a victory on Sunday would make the Seahawks the first 10-win team to miss the playoffs since the NFL went to a 17-game slate in 2021. The previous nine 10-win teams each made the postseason – seven as wild cards and two as division winners. So in some respect, Seattle caught some bad luck with the NFC being so top-heavy this year.

But beyond that, when evaluating a team’s season, it’s important to consider where that team sits in the big picture of its overall trajectory.

With the Seahawks being a nine-win team the previous two years, the cupboard wasn’t bare heading into Macdonald’s first season. But there also was a definite talent gap between Seattle and the NFC’s top teams. It would have been unrealistic to expect the Seahawks to suddenly morph into a Super Bowl contender overnight – especially with a 37-year-old first-time head coach and first-time NFL coordinators on both sides of the ball.

That left Seattle somewhere in the gray area between rebuilding mode and contending mode.

Or as Seahawks Radio Network analyst and former NFL offensive lineman Ray Roberts put it: “Discovery mode.”

“From the very beginning, I didn’t want to say that it was a rebuilding year, so I adopted this phrase from (former Seahawks running back Robert Turbin), who said he thought they were in this ‘discovery mode,'” Roberts said Friday during an appearance on Seattle Sports’ Bump and Stacy.

“I liked that (term) for this season, (because) they were trying to discover a lot of different things – what they could and couldn’t do, what certain players could and couldn’t do, who needs to be on the team (going forward), who can’t be on the team. And I think they went through that process this year.”

A good example of that came at inside linebacker.

The Seahawks entered the season with Jerome Baker and Tyrel Dodson as their starting inside backers. Both were on one-year deals, which essentially made this season a tryout of sorts to see if they were a good fit for Macdonald’s defense long-term.

Neither of them turned out to be a good match. After struggling mightily on run defense over the first half of the year, Seattle parted ways with both Baker and Dodson, replacing them with midseason trade acquisition Ernest Jones IV and rookie Tyrice Knight.

The moves worked to perfection. Along with some schematic adjustments and other personnel changes – including the insertion of safety Coby Bryant into the starting lineup – the Seahawks’ defense took off and was among the best units in the league over the second half of the year.

As Seattle went through that discovery process on defense – especially at inside linebacker – there were plenty of growing pains early on. But ultimately, it led to a defense that looks like it could be the foundation of future success for Macdonald and the Seahawks.

“Yes, you would love to be playing for something this weekend,” Roberts said. “You would love to be going to the playoffs and all that. … But I think a 10-win season and the way that they kind of made some changes during the season, I think to me it’s a successful season.

“Yeah, you can say that it’s not the Super Bowl and it’s not the playoffs. But there’s levels to all of that stuff. And so I think when you’re trying to build something, you take every win that you can get.”

Listen to the full conversation with Ray Roberts at this link or in the audio player near the middle of this story. Tune in to Bump and Stacy weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.