Seattle enters 2026 as the reigning Super Bowl champion for the first time since 2013, and that changes everything about how our team approaches this preview. The question isn’t whether the Seahawks are good — they proved that emphatically last season — it’s whether they can hold together a roster and coaching staff that just won it all while the rest of the league takes its best shot at them.
2025 Season Recap
Seattle’s 2025 season was as complete a run as the franchise has ever put together. The Seahawks went 14-3, won the NFC West for the first time since 2020, and claimed the NFC’s No. 1 seed for the first time since 2014. The defense — nicknamed “The Dark Side” — led the league in scoring, and the point differential of +191 set a franchise record. Wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba put together one of the best seasons any Seahawks receiver has ever had, setting the franchise’s single-season receiving yardage record and winning NFL Offensive Player of the Year.
The regular season had its share of drama, too, most memorably a Week 16 comeback against the Rams in which Seattle erased a 30-14 deficit and won 38-37 in overtime on a wild backward-pass recovery that’s already become part of team lore. That set up a playoff run where Seattle never really let up: a 41-6 blowout of San Francisco in the divisional round, a 31-27 win over the Rams in the NFC Championship, and a 29-13 win over New England in Super Bowl LX. Running back Kenneth Walker III was named Super Bowl MVP, and Seattle became the first team in NFL history to complete an entire postseason without committing a turnover.
Offseason Moves
The headline offseason story is the one every defending champion deals with: keeping the band together. Head coach Mike Macdonald managed to retain most of his Super Bowl-winning staff, but not all of it — offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak left to become head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, taking quarterbacks coach Andrew Janocko with him. Seattle replaced Kubiak with Brian Fleury, who spent time in the 49ers’ offensive system and has a working relationship with quarterback Sam Darnold from their time together in San Francisco. The staff also added Zachary Orr as inside linebackers coach, reuniting with Macdonald from their Baltimore days, along with several internal promotions on the defensive side.
On the roster, Seattle’s biggest subtraction is a genuinely notable one: Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker III signed with the Kansas City Chiefs in free agency. The Seahawks also lost cornerback Riq Woolen to Philadelphia, safety Coby Bryant to Chicago, and linebacker Boye Mafe to Cincinnati on a reported three-year, $20 million-per-year deal. Seattle worked to keep its core intact elsewhere, re-signing cornerback Josh Jobe, tackle Josh Jones, wide receiver Rashid Shaheed, and linebacker Drake Thomas, while adding depth in the secondary and backfield with safety D’Anthony Bell, cornerback Noah Igbinoghene, safety Rodney Thomas II, and running back Emanuel Wilson.
In the draft, Seattle picked eight players — three on offense, five on defense — and used its first-round pick, No. 32 overall, on Notre Dame running back Jadarian Price, addressing the backfield need created by Walker’s departure. The Seahawks followed that in Round 2 with TCU safety Bud Clark and in Round 3 with Arkansas cornerback Julian Neal, continuing to reinforce the secondary that anchored last year’s title run.
2026 Season Outlook
Seattle’s schedule is genuinely tough this year, and it’s front-loaded with a stretch of pain: starting in Week 4, the Seahawks play four of five games against 2025 playoff teams, including a home date against a Kansas City team that now has extra motivation to beat the club that just took its Super Bowl MVP. There’s also a short-week Thursday night trip to Denver in Week 6. Seattle draws a franchise-record six primetime games in all, opening the year at home on a Wednesday night against New England.
The back half isn’t much of a breather, either. Coming out of the Week 11 bye, Seattle goes on the road to face San Francisco, comes home for Dallas and the Giants, then heads back out for a short-week Saturday game at Philadelphia. The stretch closes with the Rams twice in a three-week span — first at home on Christmas Day, the first Christmas game in franchise history, then a Week 18 rematch in Los Angeles sandwiched around a road trip to Carolina. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that Seattle’s defense was built for exactly this kind of gauntlet, and the roster continuity gives this staff a real head start compared to most teams replacing an offensive coordinator.
Our Team’s Projection
We’re projecting Seattle at 11-6 for 2026. That’s our team leaning toward the over on the Seahawks’ current season win total of 10.5 (DraftKings, Over -115 / Under -105), though not by a wide margin.
The case for the over starts with the defense, which returns largely intact and gives Seattle a floor that few teams in the league can match — even in a down year for the offense, this unit should keep Seattle competitive in nearly every game on the schedule. The case against it centers on the two biggest questions facing this roster: whether Brian Fleury can replicate what Kubiak built on offense with a new play-caller in the building, and whether losing a Super Bowl MVP at running back shows up on Sundays before Jadarian Price and the rest of the backfield room settle in. Defending champions have stumbled before under exactly this combination of a new coordinator and a brutal early schedule, and that’s a real risk worth weighing before betting the over with confidence.
Season win totals like this one come down to exactly this kind of balance between continuity and change, and it’s worth understanding how that market works before putting money behind a number — we broke down the mechanics of it in Bet Smarter: How Season Win Totals Actually Work.