The Seattle Seahawks have only lost three games dating back to last November; the San Francisco 49ers, Los Angeles Rams, and Washington Commanders bested Seattle by a combined eight points. You know what else happened? Seattle gave the ball away a lot, namely Sam Darnold, but he’s not the only guilty party.
Those three losses saw the Seahawks lose the turnover battle by a combined 11-4, with Darnold responsible for eight of those giveaways through his interceptions. But while Darnold deserves his fair
share of criticism for his clear issue with ball security, the over-arching story continues to be Seattle’s outright negligence in terms of protecting the football.
There have been few consistent weaknesses to point to under Mike Macdonald since he became head coach in 2024. The one thing that has been a problem for almost every portion of the Macdonald Era has been turnovers, particularly in high volume.
The Seahawks have turned it over at least twice a whopping 20 times since 2024
I tweeted this stat earlier this afternoon and might as well share it here, because you do not want the Seahawks lumped in with the Cleveland Browns in any negative stat.
(H/T Stathead)
You read that right (you did read it, right?): Seattle has turned it over at least twice in a game a whopping 20 times since 2024. That’s 20 times out of 39 regular season games and obviously 20 out of 42 overall games when you count the playoffs. About half of every game of the Macdonald era has been a multi-giveaway day for the Seahawks, so much so that one of those games was when Riq Woolen fumbled his last Seahawks interception right back to the Minnesota Vikings. But you can get away with turnovers up 26-0; you can’t do what Seattle has done twice already this season.
As already noted in the tweet, the Seahawks have not so much as gone consecutive games without a turnover outside of the stretch from Week 18 against the San Francisco 49ers in 2025 through Week 1 against the New England Patriots this season. The five-game run the Seahawks had to win the NFC West, win the Super Bowl, and win on banner-raising night is the outlier, not the new norm under Macdonald.
It’s easy to point to Darnold and Geno Smith (0 interceptions through five games playing in the Jets offense, by the way!) as the culprits. Yes, they have/had their turnover woes and are the main catalysts statistically, but I wish it was as simple as blaming the quarterback.
The Seahawks cannot stop fumbling
I wrote this up two days ago and it was prophetic. Three more fumbles, one of which George Holani self-forced, and two were recovered by the 49ers. Seattle has nine fumbles through five games and Darnold doesn’t even have one yet. The running back room has collectively fumbled six times in four games, which is wholly unacceptable. It’s a nice reminder of the airtight ball security Kenneth Walker and Zach Charbonnet showed as a tandem, and we won’t see Charbonnet until Week 7. Rashid Shaheed has fumbled twice on kick returns but been fortunate that neither was lost.
Seattle has ranked top 10 in fumbles in each of Macdonald’s seasons, including numero uno in 2025. Fumble recoveries can generally be pinned on luck when you’ve got an oblong ball bouncing crazy directions on the field, but Seattle invites danger by having a high rate of fumbling. And shitty ball security is shitty ball security no matter who’s responsible, and the 2024 Seahawks special teams infamously gave us the duo of Dee Williams and Laviska Shenault Jr, both of whom were axed in December for the single worst display of kick return duties I’ve ever seen.
Neither Sam Darnold nor Geno Smith is Russell Wilson in terms of ball security
The upside of Russell Wilson’s style of football when he was Seahawks quarterback was a low interception rate. Unfortunately, the trade-off was a perennially high sack rate and those often functioned as turnovers, but when it was time to throw, Wilson usually took exceptional care of the ball. There were sack fumbles and botched exchanges occasionally, but the Seahawks were a low turnover team and he was a low turnover QB.
Just as it was unreasonable to think Geno Smith wouldn’t toss a few careless ones away with his gun-slinging style, the same holds for Darnold. These are two reformed draft busts who are willing to take chances in a way Russ generally didn’t, and frankly neither of them has an extensive track record as a high-level quarterback.
Every year in which Sam has been a full-time starter he’s thrown double-digit picks. In 2024 and 2025 he made up for it by being insanely productive and a deadly deep passer. We’re not seeing that right now and there are diminishing returns coming alongside those giveaways.
Now, is it reasonable to have Sam not lead the league in turnovers again and be closer to his Minnesota Vikings form in terms of a 2.2% interception rate? Absolutely. But even in calmer waters there is probably an acceptance that even the best version of Darnold is not going to be the type of QB who is a low- or even moderate-turnover guy. This means that the environment around him (a competent run game, other players not fumbling, having a great defense to keep scores favorable) must be stronger than it would be for an elite QB in order to keep positively producing. Seattle only has a great defense and isn’t anywhere close on the other two.
The Seahawks are not playing complementary football right now, and what figured to be a squashed problem during their postseason performance has returned in terrifying fashion. If the end of last season was the unusual blip in the trend, then the Seahawks are going to be at risk of this season looking a lot more like 2024 than 2025. You can focus your disappointment and ire primarily at Sam Darnold right now, but the turnovers are a team-wide issue that is seemingly getting worse.
