Rost: Explaining the story of the 10-win, no-playoffs Seahawks

If I told you back in August that by season’s end the Seattle Seahawks’ Devon Witherspoon would be a Pro Bowler, Jaxon Smith-Njigba would finish with over 1,000 yards, Leonard Williams would become the first Seahawk since 2018 with double-digit sacks, and Mike Macdonald would become the winningest first-year head coach in franchise history, would you have guessed the Seahawks would be a playoff team? Perhaps.

You’d undoubtedly, as a Seahawks fan, be excited to see how the season unfolded. And you would be confused — frustrated, even — to hear me immediately follow that up by telling you that the Seahawks, like you, would be watching the NFL playoffs from the couch.

I know what you’d want to know, because it’s what I would want to know: Why? What happened?

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Considering Seattle’s 10-7 record, we’ll start with what happened elsewhere first. Don’t consider it an excuse, but context: Seattle got 10 wins in a year where the NFC’s wild card teams are the best they’ve been in years. The Seahawks are the first team out of the playoffs this season behind the 11-6 Packers, 12-5 Commanders, and as of Sunday afternoon either the 14-3 Vikings or Lions. Seattle’s 10 wins would’ve been good enough for a wild card in each of the past four season. In the category of “things the Seahawks couldn’t possibly control” were phenomenal and surprising seasons from the Washington Commanders under new head coach Dan Quinn and rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels, and the Vikings with backup quarterback Sam Darnold. Both teams opened the season with longer odds than Seattle to make it to the Super Bowl, and both will be playing next week.

Next, let’s talk about what it means to be imperfect. Simply put, the absence of perfection means the inevitable presence of flaws. The Seahawks had many. You couldn’t throw a positive their way without seeing something wrong elsewhere. It’s an incredibly frustrating process, and one that makes evaluation of the season equally as difficult.

They had the best point differential in the NFC West… at plus-2. And how much weight does that carry when you don’t win your division?

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The Seahawks improved their run defense (from 31st against the run to about 18th) and scoring defense (24th to 11th)… but one of their worst performances in both categories was against the New York Giants, a Week 5 loss that ultimately cost them a playoff spot.

Geno Smith finished with the single highest completion percentage of his career as a full-time Seahawks starter… and threw more interceptions than in any other season with Seattle.

The Seahawks are not a bad team. The Titans are a bad team. The Giants, though you’d be hard-pressed to believe it if you only watched their game against the Seahawks, are a bad team. The Seahawks are a flawed team — to an incredibly frustrating degree, at times — and they are flawed in ways that will cost them until they fix it. You cannot have one of the worst offensive lines in football and expect to run the ball regularly or bulldoze your way through the playoffs. You cannot have a quarterback make costly red zone errors on a team with little wiggle room to make up for it. You cannot have improvement in your run defense without linebackers you believe fit your system (to their credit, the Seahawks at least figured this one out midseason).

There’s no worse feeling as a fan than watching your team miss the playoffs, particularly in consecutive seasons. But trust me reader, it’s much easier to go from 10 wins to 12 than it is to go from three wins to 13. And it is the former, not the latter, that Seattle needs to figure out this offseason. For Mike Macdonald, that means taking a closer look at his coaching staff to figure out whether he has the right pieces in place. Snd of course, it means focusing on keeping the development of his culture as strong as ever. For general manager John Schneider, it means making a series of complicated contract and personnel decisions, without which this team can’t advance.

Where would you start?

More on the Seattle Seahawks

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• Four big offseason questions for Seattle Seahawks

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