It appears there is an infinite-money glitch many NFL fans are not taking advantage of, at least based on my recent appearance on The Herd with Colin Cowherd.
At the very end of my 20-minute interview, when asked about the Seahawks, I expressed the possibility that the defending Super Bowl Champions are not a sure-fire, double-digit win team who can sleepwalk their way to the playoffs.
I shared the possibility that a world exists in which Seattle is a fringe playoff team in 2026, a team that might make the playoffs but not easily and as a Wild Card team.
The Seahawks currently have a 67% chance to make the playoffs according to the odds.
By the reaction to my thoughts shared on the show, you would have assumed Seattle’s odds to make the playoffs were 99%.
The current public consensus seems to be the defending Super Bowl Champions are a certainty to make the playoffs, and any option which expresses the possibility they find themselves fighting to punch their ticket in the final weeks of the season is unfounded.
I don’t see it that way.
While I’m not betting on Seattle to miss the playoffs, there are several reasons to believe the Seahawks could regress from their 14-3 record in 2026.
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Life After Klint Kubiak: Can the Offense Repeat?
Let’s begin with the loss of OC Klint Kubiak.
Kubiak entered the picture in 2025 and massively overhauled the way the offense operated.
He turned it into something special enough to see the success it did.
Let’s examine some of the changes he made in just one offseason, and compare the Seahawks offense in 2024 to Kubiak’s offense in 2025:
2024: #3 most 3+ WR sets
2025: #28 most 3+ WR sets
They were OUTSTANDING out of 12 personnel, ranking #1 in yards per play.
2024: #28 most play action
2025: #8 most play action
They were OUTSTANDING with play action, ranking #1 in yards per attempt.
2024: #25 most pre-snap motion
2025: #14 most pre-snap motion
They were OUTSTANDING with pre-snap motion, ranking #6 in yards per play.
These changes by Kubiak helped Seattle improve from #23 in EPA on first down in 2024 to #7 in 2025.
And from #18 in yards per play in 2024 to #3 in 2025.
That improvement in first-down efficiency allowed them to catch teams off guard early in games, jump out to leads, and outscore them by the #1 highest first-quarter margin in the NFL.
They ranked #4 in first-quarter points, #7 in second-quarter points, and #2 in third-quarter points.
Seattle outscored opponents by 55 points in the first quarter, #1 in the NFL, and by 118 points in the first half, #2.
Through three quarters, their cumulative point margin was +183, the best in football.
It is entirely reasonable to believe that a team whose offensive play-caller, the man who overhauled the offense and produced the #3 highest scoring offense in the NFL, would take some type of step backward after he left to be a head coach.
Let’s keep in mind, the 2024 Seahawks, with many of the same players as 2025, scored a below-average 22.1 points per game (#18 in the NFL).
The Run Game Concern
And then there is the next biggest change for Seattle: their running game.
Seattle had the #1 highest run rate in the NFL last year.
They lost their RB1 this offseason when Kenneth Walker III signed with the Chiefs.
Walker wasn’t just the RB1 for the Seahawks.
He was their Super Bowl MVP, recording 161 scrimmage yards against the Patriots.
His heir apparent, Zach Charbonnet, tore his ACL in the Divisional Round and will certainly miss time in 2026.
Seattle now will turn to RB3 from 2025, George Holani, and first-round rookie Jadarian Price.
Price is dynamic and talented, but his fumble rate ranked #3 highest in this RB class.
He recorded the #2 worst pass protection grade of any RB in this class, and earned just a 9.9% target rate on routes, the #2 lowest in this class.
He had just 15 total receptions in college.
Until Charbonnet returns (and even after to a degree), this RB room has massive question marks as compared to 2025.
On non-Walker runs last season, Seahawks RBs collectively ranked:
#25 in yards per carry (3.9)
#25 in explosive run rate (5.5%)
#28 in stuff rate (22%)
Subtracting Kubiak and Walker, with Charbonnet likely to miss the start of the season, is certainly a problem for a team that made so many improvements offensively in 2025, not simply by “playing better,” but thanks to all the tweaks made by the OC and by relying on the run game at the #1 highest rate in the NFL.
Health Luck, One-Score Luck & Schedule Difficulty
Seattle also had the good fortune last season of fielding the #3 healthiest roster in the NFL and delivering the #7 best win-rate in one-score games.
While good teams win close games, close game variance can strike even the best teams, and certainly there is no way to know now whether Seattle will be a top three healthiest team by the end of the 2026 season.
Lastly, I’ll just mention one caveat as it relates to one of the best defenses in the NFL, if not the single best, along with one of the best defensive coaches in the NFL, if not the single best.
Over the entire regular season, these are the only healthy quarterbacks Seattle beat by more than one score (with the caveat that Jayden Daniels was not 100% entering the game he played and left the game with an injury):
Week 2: Aaron Rodgers
Week 3: Spencer Rattler
Week 10: Jacoby Brissett
Week 13: Max Brosmer
Week 14: Kirk Cousins
Week 17: Bryce Young
Week 18: Brock Purdy
With the exception of Brock Purdy’s 49ers (13-3 win), the rest of this list that Seattle dispatched by more than one score was severely questionable.
Don’t forget that in Week 15, Seattle barely beat 44-year-old Philip Rivers in his first NFL game played since retiring in 2020, winning by two points.
The point is not to discredit Seattle’s obviously elite defense.
It’s just to provide context to who they played and beat, and that the 2026 schedule of opposing QBs is not projected to be nearly as bad as it was in 2025.
By my metrics, I project Seattle’s defense to play the #3 toughest schedule of opposing QBs and the #1 toughest overall schedule of offenses.
And they’ll need to do so despite the losses of starters S Coby Bryant, CB Tariq Woolen, and EDGE Boye Mafe.
None of these individual concerns are enough to say the Seahawks will struggle this season.
Collectively, however, they present a reasonable case to imagine that Seattle might not assuredly win double-digit games and stamp a playoff ticket before the season has even started, which it seems like most Seahawks fans as well as NFL fans league-wide generally expect.
Seattle still has an elite defense with an elite defensive coach, along with a quarterback, offensive line, and receiving corps that led them to 14 wins and a Super Bowl in 2025.
But every year presents new problems to solve, new injuries to overcome, and it remains to be seen exactly how successful the Seahawks will be in 2026.
While I don’t expect them to miss the playoffs, it’s more than reasonable to see a path in which they are battling for a Wild Card berth late in the season with many other fringe playoff teams.
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