Many national sites have predicted the Seattle Seahawks to finish between seven and nine wins in 2024. That makes some sense as Seattle has gone 9-8 in back-to-back seasons. Fewer sites have Seattle being better this year, but that makes little sense.
Sure, expecting a first-year head coach to win at a high level in year one might be a bit too much, but no one is yet expecting Mike Macdonald to win a Super Bowl. The same could not be said of some improvement, however. Macdonald has shown he can immediately improve a defense and if Seattle’s defense is better, the team could win 10 or 11 games.
What would be more surprising is if Seattle plummeted in quality this year. Offensively, while the new has a new direction with offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb, the skill position players remain the same. Geno Smith is a quality QB1, Kenneth Walker III is a good RB3, and DK Metcalf, Tyler Lockett, and Jaxon Smith-Njigba form one of the best wide receiver trios in the league. The offensive line cannot be worse than it was last year.
One writer believes the 2024 Seahawks will be five games worse than last year
In 2023, Seattle ranked 17th in the league in scoring. The year before, the team ranked ninth. Again, most of the offensive talent that was around in 2022 is still with the team. With a better scheme and better play-calling in 2024, Seattle could bounce back to ninth in scoring.
Geno Smith has ranked 15th or better in Total QBR in each of the past two seasons. Even though his overall numbers slightly dipped last season, he was still 10th in the NFL in interception percentage at just 1.8. He led the league in both game-winning drives and fourth quarter comebacks.
That last part may be because of any quarterback who threw at least 100 passes during in the fourth quarter of games in 2023 (there were 22 such quarterbacks), Smith was seventh in both completion percentage and quarterback rating. He was good at the end of games and many times made the difference between a win or a loss. Smith is a good quarterback.
All of this is pointed out because NFL Spin Zone’s Lou Scataglia seems bent on thinking Smith is very bad. He recently ranked the Seahawks QB room as a ridiculous 29th in the league. This was done without statistical evidence, however. The reason for that is there is no evidence to support Scataglia’s claim.
Now in a record prediction article for each team, Scataglia believes Seattle will go 4-13 in 2024. He projects this even though in his article he implies the defense should be better under Macdonald. The problem with Seattle is Smith, according to Scataglia, even though Smith has been a big reason the Seahawks have been even as good as 9-8 the last two years.
While it might be somewhat sensible for Seattle to fall to seven wins, though that seems low, because of a new coaching staff, what is illogical is for the Seahawks to suddenly be five games worse than the last two seasons. This is especially true if the defense is improved. Scataglia expecting Smith and the offense to be so bad that Seattle falls to 4-13 is making a blind guess without any solid reason to support the wretched theory.
