The wait is finally over. We have real, regular-season information on the 2025 Seattle Seahawks. Sam Darnold, Klint Kubiak’s offense, the Jalen Milroe package, all of it was unveiled Sunday afternoon.
It sucked.
0-1 is how Seattle starts the season, and there were Winners and Losers (besides the 49ers winning and the Seahawks losing). Let’s get to them!
Winners
Jaxon Smith-Njigba. What a strange conversation this offseason about him and Cooper Kupp, the loss of DK Metcalf, and a “prototypical WR1”. It seems,
a very good wide receiver is friggin a very good wide receiver. Going 9-124 (with one lost fumble, though), he was every bit as effective as his strongest moments of last season.
The Defensive Line. I’m now officially sold (re-sold?) that this unit is the strength of the team. My goodness. The obvious highlights include Leonard Williams picking up exactly where he left off last year, but across the board these guys played some solidly disruptive football. Say what you want about how the game ended, but the West Coast’s best player had 69 yards rushing and 3.1 Yards per Carry. They held up.
Julian Love. For the first sack of the 2025 season, AND first blocked field goal, you get a Win! And what a sack it was, beating Christian McCaffrey inside for a 12-yard loss. Juicy.
Byron Murphy. On the previously mentioned sack, Murphy was already in the backfield of his own accord, providing clean-up duty. I wanted to give him a shout-out here because he’s the 16th overall pick from last year, and his relationship with stats is always going to be complicated.
Ernest Jones. For the first interception of the 2025 season, YOU get a win! Also, holy vertical leaps, batman.
Josh Jobe. For making Brock Purdy look like the very average quarterback he is, congratulations on interception number two of the day and season.
Demarcus Lawrence led the team with two Tackles for Loss, so that’s pretty cool I guess.
Jason Myers. If you take only one thing away from that game, it should be that the kicker superiority resides in Seattle. Laughably so.
Losers
Anthony Bradford hype. This hurts so bad. I wanted as much as anyone to believe, but some things can only change so quickly. He was better, definitely better, than the dreadful moments of 2024, but two big whiffs in the first quarter alone kept the Seahawks from scoring.
Coby Bryant in coverage. Similarly, two misses in coverage on the first drive helped account for the 49ers’ opening touchdown drive.
Whoever was guarding George Kittle. If he hadn’t left, this score probably would have been even more lopsided.
Kenneth Walker. Clearly he has lost his grip on the starting/primary back role. One can only remain unavailable for so long in this new Macdonald/Kubiak regime. Besides that, he had 24 total yards on 13 touches, which averages out to be a pile of crap per carry.
The second half run game in general. Uninspiring, ineffective. Like the Matrix trilogy, Zach Charbonnet started off promising, and only got worse. 3.9 YPC is certainly better than Walker, but not good at all.
Cooper Kupp. Two catches for 15 yards and notably absent the whole day. Throw in how bad his drop was, on third down after a turnover, wide open, and that’s a pretty terrible look for the team’s *checks notes* second-best receiver of the day.
Klint Kubiak? I don’t know, but that looked different than preseason right? Two things stood out that I did not care for – play action seemed diminished, and all these phenomenally inept pitch plays. Running up the middle was at least ept, the toss right for 1 yard repeatedly could disappear next week thank you.
Field Goal Decision. 4th-and-1 on the 19 with 3:24 left and as we’ve already established, the worst kicker in the free world on the opposing sideline. As mediocre as the Seattle run game became, it actually seldom had a 0-yard run. Only Ken Walker had those, and let’s be honest the ball would have gone to Charbonnet. Going for touchdown and less time seems (not even in retrospect) like the superior option than 3-points and more time against a Kyle Shanahan offense you’ve now forced into touchdown mode. Bad bad bad.
Undecided. Trending bad if we’re being honest.
Riq Woolen. Some penalties, some bad coverage (including on the winning TD), and what in the world was that early hesitation against Ricky Persall drive the sideline on the final drive? That was the longest play of the game, and totally unnecessary. On the other hand, he saved a touchdown in the front right corner with an incredibly close and tip. Woolen remains Woolen.
Sam Darnold. You may have quite a lot to think or say about Darnold. My biggest gripe by far is actually the 13 targets to Smith-Njigba. Only 9 targets to the entire rest of the team. Three of those were to Walker for four total yards. I don’t know how this Klint Kubiak offense is supposed to run, but Darnold did not run it. That was a horrendous use of options. I call it the Justin Jefferson syndrome, and as good as JSN is, that strategy is not invincible, nor is JSN quite at Jefferson’s level. However, this has virtually nothing to do with Smith-Njigba himself, and more to do with the fact that Darnold was, by and large, not under pressure. We’ll get numbers later, but he only took one sack. The offensive line looked pretty good. That being said, this is Week 1. The San Francisco defense is probably decent. This is certainly not panic, but neither was that enjoyable. I had hoped – and gone on record – that Darnold shouldn’t matter all that much in this offensive scheme, but if he’s going to insist on leading the team to 3-10 on third down, he might matter quite a bit. Unfortunately.
