Seattle Seahawks

The 2025 Seattle Seahawks went 14-3, stormed through the NFC playoffs, and capped it all with a 29-13 Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots — delivering the franchise's second championship and one of the most dominant seasons in team history. This was a year of reinvention: Seattle traded away Geno Smith and DK Metcalf, brought in Sam Darnold and Cooper Kupp, and let Mike Macdonald's defensive vision take full flight under the banner of "The Dark Side." The Seahawks absorbed an opening-week loss to the 49ers and a heartbreaking Week 5 shootout against the Buccaneers, then rattled off nine straight wins that left no doubt about who owned the NFC West. The Week 16 comeback against the Rams — down 16 in the fourth quarter, winning 38-37 — broke a franchise-long streak of futility in those situations and became the emotional signature of a team that simply refused to lose. From start to finish, this squad played with a relentless edge, and they earned every bit of the confetti that fell in New Orleans.

Let's put the whole season in numbers. Seattle's scoring differential was a staggering plus-191 points across seventeen games, shattering the franchise record set by the 2013 Super Bowl team. The offense generated a combined expected points added — that's how much each snap moved the needle toward scoring — of roughly plus 33 across passing and rushing, while the defense posted a combined expected points added allowed of minus 125, a monstrous number that reflects dominance on every snap. The turnover ledger was the one blemish: Seattle committed 26 offensive turnovers against only 24 takeaways, finishing underwater in turnover margin despite all that defensive pressure. On third down, the offense converted 41 percent of its attempts while the defense held opponents to just 32 percent, a gap that consistently tilted field position and game flow. What makes this team's profile even more impressive is the consistency — Seattle scored between 18 and 44 points in all but two games, with only the Week 18 finale against San Francisco and the Week 1 opener dipping into the low teens, and even those were controlled defensive wins. This was not a boom-or-bust outfit; it was a week-in, week-out machine.

Now let's talk about the passing offense. Seattle's air attack averaged 239 yards per game and finished the season with a total passing expected points added of plus 56.8 — a number that tells you this unit was consistently adding value on a per-snap basis, not just piling up yards in garbage time. The per-play passing expected points added came in at plus 0.11, meaning every dropback moved the chains forward more often than not, and the offense generated 75 explosive plays of twenty or more yards across the season, roughly four and a half per game. Sack protection was solid at 27 sacks allowed, keeping Darnold upright enough to attack downfield with regularity. The passing game did have its turbulent stretches — the 26 offensive turnovers on the year were heavily concentrated in the air, including multiple interception-heavy outings like the Week 11 loss at the Rams — but the highs were spectacular, none more so than the Week 12 connection in Tennessee when Darnold found Jaxon Smith-Njigba on third-and-six, launching a deep ball down the right sideline that Smith-Njigba turned into a 63-yard touchdown with twenty yards after the catch, a play worth plus 6.4 expected points added that encapsulated everything this passing game could be. Smith-Njigba was the engine of the entire operation: 119 catches for 1,793 yards and 10 touchdowns on the season, commanding a 37 percent target share and a 50 percent share of all air yards, with a total receiving expected points added of plus 90.7 that made him the clear Offensive Player of the Year.

Now let's dig into the rushing offense. The ground game averaged 124.5 yards per game on 28.9 carries, respectable volume numbers that masked a per-carry expected points added of minus 0.05 — essentially a break-even rushing attack that didn't consistently move the chains on its own. The unit's total rushing expected points added finished at minus 24.1, meaning the run game was a slight drag on the offense's overall efficiency, though it found its moments in short-yardage and goal-line situations where Zach Charbonnet's 12 rushing touchdowns did the heavy lifting. Consistency was a challenge: Seattle's rushing output swung wildly from dominant afternoons like the 44-point Week 10 blowout of the Cardinals to games where the ground game disappeared entirely and the offense leaned on Darnold's arm. Kenneth Walker was the lead back with 1,027 yards and 5 touchdowns on 221 carries, adding 282 receiving yards as a check-down threat, but his individual rushing expected points added of minus 14.3 underscores that this was a unit carried more by volume and touchdowns than by consistent efficiency.

Next up, the pass defense. This is where the 2025 Seahawks became legendary. The pass defense allowed just 212.9 yards per game and posted a total passing expected points added allowed of minus 64.8 on the season — and remember, when we're talking defense, that massive negative number is elite, meaning opposing quarterbacks were consistently losing value on every throw against Seattle's secondary and pass rush. The unit racked up 47 sacks across seventeen games, nearly three per outing, while holding opponents to just 20 passing touchdowns all year. Third-down defense was suffocating at a 32 percent conversion rate allowed, and the 24 takeaways included a parade of momentum-shifting interceptions — none bigger than the Week 13 shutout of the Vikings, when Ernest Jones picked off a short pass in the red zone and returned it 85 yards for a touchdown, swinging the expected points by nearly 11 points on a single snap and setting the tone for a 26-0 blanking. The consistency was the truly remarkable part: this wasn't a defense that feasted on bad quarterbacks and wilted against good ones. They held Aaron Rodgers, Brock Purdy, C.J. Stroud, and Baker Mayfield in check across the season, and then went turnover-free themselves through the entire postseason while still forcing turnovers in all three playoff games. Derick Lawrence was the fulcrum, generating strip-sacks, fumble recoveries, and constant pressure that made everything else click.

And the run defense. Seattle's front was just as dominant against the run, allowing only 92.4 yards per game on 411 carries with a total rushing expected points added allowed of minus 59.7 — again, that deep negative number means opposing running backs were consistently losing yardage and value against this front seven. Only 9 rushing touchdowns were allowed all season, and opposing offenses converted just 16 percent of their red-zone snaps into touchdowns, a historically stingy rate that forced teams into field-goal attempts over and over. The run defense was remarkably steady from September through January, never allowing a single opponent to truly impose its will on the ground, which set up the pass rush to tee off on obvious passing downs. This was the foundation of "The Dark Side" — a front that smothered the run first and then hunted the quarterback, and it never let up.