History awaits: If the defense can even come close to replicating the Seahawks from a decade ago, the next two seasons should be special
RENTON, Wash. – Predicting the Seattle Seahawks’ fate in the 2023 season is for lightweights.
We’ll give you twice the value, two seasons for the price of one: The Seahawks win at least 12 regular-season games and one or more playoff games this season, and follow that with a Super Bowl appearance following the 2024 season.
It turns out that predictions are easier when you can look at the past instead of trying to see into the future. We’ve seen this before. And it was sensational.
With a youth infusion fueled by two dominating draft classes, this club is on a similar flight path as during the Hawks’ climb to two Super Bowl appearances early in the 2010s.
Most of the oddsmakers have put the Hawks’ likely over/under for wins this season at 8.5-9. Despite a schedule with some obvious landmines, Seattle will exceed that win total by several games in ’23.
The Seahawks fooled them last season, too.
Most predicted the Hawks to be in the NFL cellar last season, relying so heavily on six rookies and a quarterback they had to thaw from having been in a cryogenic freeze for six seasons. But they refuted critics with nine wins and a playoff berth.
This spring, all 10 draft picks made the roster, meaning that 20 of 53 active-roster Seahawks are in their first or second year. Most are very good. Some brilliant. All on the rise.
Historical similarities aren’t guarantees, of course, and the obvious factor separating this upward surge and the one that led them to consecutive Super Bowls is clear: The predecessors were well into the process of becoming one of the NFL’s all-time great defenses.
Does this group have that much potential? TBD. To Be Determined, or Tenable But Doubtful.
Also, those forefathers protected homefield advantage with a vengeance, going 15-1 in 2012 and 2013, while the last two Hawks clubs have gone 8-9 at Lumen Field the past two seasons.
That has to change.
• Where could this go wrong? Typical pitfalls. Key injuries and unexpected upsets can quell the momentum. A test on the road against the upstart Detroit Lions in Week 2 will be an early indicator, but all things can be overcome from a loss that early – especially with such a young team.
It’s the diabolical four-game stretch heading into the holiday season that will decide this team’s fate. They host defending NFC West champ San Francisco on Thanksgiving and are then on the road at Dallas and San Francisco before coming back to play host to defending NFC champ Philadelphia.
Even going 2-2 in that stretch would be a major springboard toward the postseason.
• Reason No. 1 for optimism: Jaxon Smith-Njigba is the most impressive Seahawks rookie receiver I’ve seen since Joey Galloway showed up in 1995. He’s fast and smooth, with sensational hands and an inner GPS for navigating through space in the secondary.
Adding him to the wide receiver tandem of D.K. Metcalf and Tyler Lockett (both 1,000-yard-plus receivers in 2022) gives the Seahawks a more dangerous receiving corps than they’ve ever had. Even with the ball being spread around, JSN should break Galloway’s rookie record of 67 catches.
• Reason No. 2: While some wonder if quarterback Geno Smith had a fluky Pro Bowl season last year and will return to earlier form, I suspect he will be better this year, given the addition of JSN, the maturation of back Ken Walker III, and reason to expect the young offensive line to be improved.
Look at Russell Wilson’s numbers in the great 2013 season (63.1 completion percentage, 3,357 passing yards for 26 TDs, nine interceptions), and you can see that Smith’s from last year are better (69.8%, 4,282 yards, 30 TDs, 11 intercepts).
• Reason No. 3: What about Marshawn Lynch? Surely nobody can replicate what he meant to the Hawks back in the day. True. But as a rookie who didn’t get double-figure carries in a game until the middle of last October, Walker finished with 1,050 yards, while Lynch, in 2013, rushed for only 200 more yards on 73 more carries.
Health and durability will be key, but Walker’s skills, with a year’s experience and more consistent blocking, are enormously promising.
• Reason No. 4: An obvious throwback link to the Legion of Boom dominance is middle linebacker Bobby Wagner. Wagner is 33, but last season, with the Rams, he had 140 tackles and a career high six sacks. He’s still elite.
The Hawks’ main problem in 2022 was stopping the run, often blamed on having bad “run fits,” meaning people weren’t in the proper place to make the tackle.
Wagner is a cure for bad run fits. He won’t allow them, and he’ll plug them by himself if he has to.
• Reason No. 5: Nobody can replicate the Boom of those early secondaries. But if Jamal Adams can, at some point, return to health, the ’23 secondary is stacked. A healthy Adams is a difference maker, supporting the run and laying wood on unsuspecting receivers. Quandre Diggs is coming off three straight Pro Bowls and second-year corner Riq Woolen has room for improvement despite having tied for the NFL lead in interceptions with six.
It’s not Sherman, Chancellor, Thomas, etc., but this could still become the aerie of serious ballhawks.
• Reason No. 6: Is anybody as reliably stout in the middle as Brandon Mebane was in the glory years? Nope. He was such an underappreciated stalwart. Anybody like Michael Bennett and Cliff Avril on the edges? To some degree, maybe, by committee. Bennett and Avril had 16.5 sacks combined in 2013. Uchenna Nwosu and Darrell Taylor split 19 sacks last season.
Second-year edge Boye Mafe was touted as the most-improved player on the team during training camp, and rookie Derick Hall, of Auburn, can also bring heat.
• Reason No. 7: Coach Pete Carroll thinks this team has something special, and there’s more than a decade of reasons to trust his opinion. He said it started with last season’s “unexpected success,” and continues with a powerful “attitude and mentality” across the roster.
He capsulized the team’s trajectory with this: “Everything about it is on the up.”
Yes, that seems valid. Perhaps even WAY up.