The cracks in the Seahawks offense last season are now chasms under Brian Fleury

· Yahoo Sports

The Seattle Seahawks offense stinks. Ignore the points scored, which do not accurately reflect the underlying statistics, the Seahawks offense is bad. It may cost them a playoff berth, and it’s pretty much already cost them the NFC West title barring some humongous San Francisco 49ers collapse.

Seattle sits at 3-3 after a brutal 17-14 overtime loss to the Denver Broncos. The Seahawks’ three losses are by a combined eight points, but the turnover margin in those games is a combined -7. That’s not going to get it done. Sam Darnold has played poorly enough to justify talks about benching him. The running game is both banged up and an absolute mess. If not for Jaxon Smith-Njigba, the Seahawks would look like an offense befitting of their 1990s throwbacks, because Seattle’s offenses for much of the early 1990s were an impossible watch.

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New offensive coordinator Brian Fleury is taking a lot of heat for the way this unit has cratered coming off a Super Bowl season. I’m not going to excuse Fleury whatsoever for this atrocious offensive slide, but I think there’s something bigger at play that stems from the tail-end of last season under Klint Kubiak.

The warning signs for the Seahawks offense were there last year

For those of you who are new to Field Gulls and/or don’t remember, I wrote a big article right before the season finale against the San Francisco 49ers. Seattle had won six consecutive games but the high-flying, high-scoring offense from the first half of the season noticeably dipped during the win streak. I’m not going to just quote myself in huge blocks and make this article a lot longer than it needs to be, so here are the CliffNotes (MookNotes?) of what I observed at the time:

  • The passing game clearly declined in efficiency from the Los Angeles Rams loss onward. The run game improved, which was a relief, but Sam Darnold’s hot start noticeably cooled and it was more than just the four-interception disaster against LA. His sack rate would’ve been worse if you took the Rams game out, actually. They were also a much more explosive offense pre-Rams loss.
  • Teams started blitzing Sam Darnold more and stacking the box less. Four of Darnold’s six highest blitz rates faced were from Week 11 onward, most notably the onslaught from Brian Flores’ Minnesota Vikings. Even the Carolina Panthers blitzed on over half of Darnold’s dropbacks. Darnold was one of the most blitzed QBs at the time (and generally performed well), but teams were sending extra heat more often. In terms of stacked boxes (8+ defenders in the box), the Seahawks went from facing stacked boxes north of 35 percent of the time to barely 30. Opposing teams stopped fretting about the running game and wanted Sam Darnold to beat them.
  • Sam Darnold’s weaknesses were exposed in pure dropback situations. When Sam was slinging it, the Seahawks were the best play-action passing team in the NFL. Put him in a spot without the play-action and things get a whole lot worse. At the time of last year’s article, Darnold was 23rd in EPA/dropback on non-PA throws, with most of his interceptions coming in those scenarios.
  • Seattle scored a lot of points by living off short fields. The Seahawks still scored at a healthy clip in part because they were getting defensive and special teams touchdowns, as well as really short fields that the offense couldn’t screw up. They led the NFL in touchdown drives starting at midfield or better from Week 12 onward. From Weeks 1-11, the Seahawks scored touchdowns on about 25% of their drives when starting inside their own 30. They scored touchdowns about 10% of the time from Week 11 onward, which ranked 28th.
  • The running game showed signs of improvement. The rushing EPA was markedly better while the success rate was only moderately better. Seattle’s passing game dropped considerably but the rushing attack found some juice as the season progressed. A great sign for how they ended up performing in the Super Bowl.

My buddy Griff (cmikesspinmove on Twitter and BlueSky, one half of the Seattle Overload podcast), provided some more perspective on how flat the passing offense in particular was after Darnold’s torrid start.

Things have only gotten worse for the Seahawks in 2026

  • The Seahawks offense is not good at virtually anything right now even though Jaxon Smith-Njigba is having a dominant season. They rank 25th in EPA/play, 18th in EPA/pass (almost certainly propped up by Drew Lock’s showing against the Arizona Cardinals), 31st in EPA/rush, 9th in sack rate, 16th in net yards/attempt, 28th in third-down conversion rate, 18th in red zone touchdown rate, and 16th in yards per play.
  • Sam Darnold is playing like a bad quarterback in play-action or dropback. Darnold is 24th in EPA/play on play-action passes, heavily hampered by his three interceptions and no touchdown passes, and 25th in EPA/dropback on non-PA throws, right behind Bo Nix. So nothing is working for Darnold and his turnovers are absolute game-sinkers.
  • Defenses are stacking the box even less than last year and Seattle can’t take advantage. While fully acknowledging the Jadarian Price and Zach Charbonnet injuries, Seattle cannot run the ball explosively. The stacked box rate is 23.6%, 15th in the NFL and nine percentage points lower than 2025. The Seahawks rank 25th in EPA/rush against light boxes, and their yards after contact against light boxes is 19th after being 11th in 2025. Over the past two games, the Seahawks faced stack boxes at a 15% clip, and the Seahawks running backs put up zero explosive runs against the San Francisco 49ers and three against the Broncos.
  • Yes, Sam Darnold is still getting blitzed a lot, and he’s the literal worst QB when pressured. Darnold has been blitzed on almost 37% of his dropbacks, fifth-highest rate in the NFL. Last year is was 34.8%, so it was already high and now it’s even higher. When he’s pressured, he is essentially a non-functioning quarterback. This is his EPA/dropback. Dead last.

Keep in mind that Darnold was 30th in this same stat last year, so this is a two-year trend of the same problem. When he’s under duress he is at his worst, and the offensive scheme and pass protection only exacerbates his chronic weakness.

  • The Seahawks still cannot consistently score touchdowns without reasonably good field position. Seattle has now had 40 drives at or inside of its own 30-yard line this season. Only five of those have turned into touchdowns, which ranks 26th (via Stathead). Their touchdown drives during this ugly three-game stretch have traveled 23, 65, 20, 68, 24, 23, and 67 yards. They’re average TD drive length from Week 4 onward is 41 yards. When Drew Lock started against the Cardinals, they did have 86-, 80-, and 70-yard touchdown drives, while Darnold had 90- and 80-yard TD possessions against the Washington Commanders. That’s it. But the pattern from late last year has bled into this year: Seattle’s offense is stuck when it isn’t starting possessions effectively a couple of first downs away from field goal range. You cannot live like that.
  • The running game is horrendous. I’ve already given some stats earlier in this section, but when Kenneth Walker III and Zach Charbonnet (up until his injury) caught fire it saved the offense. That’s not happening with Emanuel Wilson and George Holani. So if the passing game structure is broken and there is no running game as a fallback option, you are screwed.
  • We have to be honest with how much Klint Kubiak protected this offensive line. Hawkblogger had this great question and stat about Seattle’s max protect usage. Last year they were first, this year (prior to last night) they were 27th. That means a lot more responsibility belonging to the offensive line than previously delegated.

This offensive line is not performing well and I do not think Fleury is helping with his play-calling. Maybe the most dispiriting thing for Seattle outside of Darnold’s drop in form is that this o-line may not be as good as hoped. Not all of this falls on Darnold when seasoned veterans like Abe Lucas are getting put in the spin cycle by Nik Bonitto, or the interior is getting overwhelmed by superior defensive tackles.

It’s easy and simplistic to just go, “Run what Kubiak ran last year!” and that’s how you change the offense. But Klint isn’t here anymore, and there were clear signs that Kubiak’s offense had hit certain walls before finding a crevice to victory through the rushing attack. If nothing else, Kubiak knew what concepts Sam liked and executed well, and those two put together a masterclass in the NFC Championship. I’m not sure if the same applies for Fleury.

There’s a cynical part of me that believes Kubiak maxed out what he could to make Sam a well-functioning quarterback, and that there really isn’t a way forward with Sam as a starter because of his long-standing weak spots in pure dropback situations. With non-elite quarterbacks there are only so many levers you can pull before competent defenses respond. Another part of me believes Brian Fleury’s offense is not helping Darnold (or, really, even his offensive line) nearly enough to be put in more optimal positions to succeed and look more like the QB we saw in 2024 and 2025.

Either way, dating back to the homestretch of last year, we’re almost the equivalent of a full season of the passing offense not being particularly sharp outside of JSN, and opposing defenses have largely figured out how to turn the play-action money machine off and now they have no reason to respect the run until further notice. Blitz Darnold, pressure Darnold, and you can even live with JSN feasting if it means nothing else of note gets accomplished. Seattle needs answers fast, or else this season is going to be a bust and cause a significant rethink of this offense heading into next offseason.

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