The Seattle Seahawks didn’t make the playoffs in 2021 and had their first losing record since 2011, the year before Russell Wilson was drafted. Could this be the end of the current version of the Seahawks?
The question is out there. The headline of a Seattle Times recap of a Week 17 victory over the Lions read, “If Russell Wilson just played his last home game with the Seahawks, he put on quite a show.”
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So what happened in 2021 to bring us to this point? Let’s recap the season and then look at where the Seahawks might go from here.
The offense
Despite the midseason injury to Wilson, this is the less interesting side of the ball. I could say “the offense was good when Russell Wilson was healthy” and end this section. But let’s take a closer look.
As a reminder, Wilson broke his finger during a Week 5 matchup against the Rams. Through Week 5, Seattle’s offense ranked 10th in the league in Expected Points Added (EPA) per play and fifth in Football Outsiders’ DVOA, and Wilson was the second-highest-graded quarterback by Pro Football Focus. In other words, none of the problems that plagued Seattle’s offense down the stretch of the 2020 season appeared to carry over to the new season, and all of this was about what we’ve come to expect from Wilson and Seattle’s offense. That the team started 2-3 was more a reflection of repeated defensive breakdowns (as we’ll get to below) than poor play by the offense. Here is the picture of offensive and defensive EPA per play through the first five weeks:
The remainder of the season saw Geno Smith and a recovering Wilson behind center. Wilson’s play was clearly affected by the injury: Of Wilson’s seven highest-graded games this season, per PFF, five came before the injury and the other two came against bottom feeders Detroit and Houston. Aside from the Detroit and Houston games, Wilson often didn’t look like himself after the injury, especially in his first game back in Green Bay when he couldn’t line up under center.
Russell Wilson says for first time he "obviously" wasn't 100% when he returned to Seahawks after 4 weeks from finger surgery to play Nov. 14 at Green Bay, the 1st shutout of his career. Says it took two games played before he felt "really good," and full go last "several games"
— Gregg Bell (@gbellseattle) December 23, 2021
If we take Wilson at his word, he first felt “really good” in Week 12, the loss in Washington. This is supported by his grades: He ranked 34th of 38 quarterbacks in weeks 10 and 11 before rebounding to 17th of 39 since (and, for what it’s worth, No. 8 without the dismal showing in Los Angeles in Week 15). Overall, since Week 12, Seattle’s offense ranked fourth in the league in EPA/play, aided by a Rashaad Penny breakout during the last month of the season.
However, not everything is rosy. An important caveat is that the offense’s continued success — in the healthy Wilson games, at least — comes despite struggling in pass protection.
The figure above shows the likelihood of the Seahawks’ (green) pass protection holding up through a given amount of time relative to league average (dashed line), with thanks to PFF’s Timo Riske for providing the graphic. Compared with the rest of the league, the Seahawks were much more likely to give up quick pressures, making Wilson’s job that much more difficult. Overall, the Seahawks rank No. 26 in pass block grade. In particular, the interior of the offensive line continued to struggle, with Ethan Pocic and Kyle Fuller both grading as bottom-five centers in pass protection (out of 41 qualifying players) and Damien Lewis 78th out of 90 qualifying guards. In addition, Duane Brown finally showed signs of age, with the 36-year-old having his lowest-graded season in pass protection since his rookie year in 2008.
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We have evidence spanning Wilson’s entire career that he can lead an efficient offense despite poor pass protection. However, Wilson’s frustration with the team that boiled over into the media last year was driven at least in part by being fed up about the lack of protection, and he pointedly told Dan Patrick that “we’ve got to get better up front.” It hasn’t happened.
The defense
Here is where things get more interesting. Though the Seahawks ranked No. 11 in points allowed per game, more comprehensive metrics that attempt to isolate defensive performance are less optimistic about Seattle’s defense. The Seahawks ranked 21st in the league in ESPN’s FPI and 21st in Football Outsiders’ DVOA along with 20th in EPA/play.
So why the divergence between points per game and these other measures? There are two main reasons.
The first is something the defense has no control over: field position. Because the Seahawks rarely turned the ball over, their offense was No. 2 in the rate at which a given series ends in a punt, trailing only the Texans (this does not reflect well on the offense). Lots of punting, hardly ever going for fourth downs and having superstar punter Michael Dickson meant that Seattle’s defense was put into the best position in the league. In particular, their league-best starting field position was about 3.5 yards better than the average team and 8 yards better than the team with the worst field position, Carolina. Added up over nearly 200 drives, that’s a lot of extra space to work with.
What did the defense do with that space? For the most part, it allowed offenses to march down the field before finally tightening up in the red zone.
The figure above shows the rate at which a defense allowed opponents to take a set of downs and earn a new set of downs. The Seahawks ranked in the bottom 10 by this measure — in addition to being second worst in plays per opponent drive allowed, worst in defensive time of possession allowed and sixth worst in yards per drive allowed. That the Seahawks ranked 15th in points per drive allowed reflects the advantageous field position (something the defense has no control over) and, to their credit, solid performance in the red zone (No. 9 in points per red zone trip allowed).
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The second reason that points allowed per game provide an incomplete measure of Seattle’s defensive performance this season is that it doesn’t take into account another way the defense can influence the result of a game: by creating takeaways. The Seahawks were the fifth-worst defense at creating takeaways on a per-drive basis, meaning that relative to other teams, the defense did not consistently create big plays that benefitted the offense. And though it is true that turnovers are unstable on a week-to-week and even season-to-season basis, the lack of turnovers still should inform how the defense actually affected games looking back.
That the defense didn’t perform very well shouldn’t be a surprise. In my season preview, I wrote that “(Mike) Clay’s assessment of the Seahawks on both sides of the ball — the sixth-best offense and 23rd-ranked defense — is very similar to The Athletic’s Sheil Kapadia, who has the Seahawks at No. 8 on offense and 22nd on defense.” After 17 games, Seattle’s DVOA finished almost dead-on with this prediction, even with Wilson’s injury: No. 7 on offense and No. 21 on defense.
Summing up the 2021 Seahawks
Combining the sides of the ball above, the Seahawks were about as good as most expected but didn’t come close to making the playoffs. Aside from the Wilson injury, the main driver behind the discrepancy that all the good fortune in close games from prior seasons finally reversed, with the Seahawks beating the 49ers twice by one touchdown and going 0-5 in other games decided by seven points or fewer (losses by three to Tennessee, Pittsburgh and New Orleans, a loss by two to Washington and a loss by one to Chicago).
Perhaps the Seahawks would have beaten Pittsburgh and New Orleans if Wilson were starting, along with Washington if he was playing at 100 percent. However, even if Wilson hadn’t been hurt, there’s not much reason to expect this year would have been much different from prior years. At the time of the injury, the Seahawks were on their way to a 2-3 hole in a division with a 5-0 team (Arizona) and a 4-1 team (Los Angeles) and would likely be staring at a road game in the wild-card round in Dallas or Tampa Bay this weekend. Wilson’s injury has overshadowed just how unlikely this team would have been to make noise in the NFC playoffs this season.
Where to go from here
If Wilson wants to remain a Seahawk, there’s not much thought required from the team’s perspective. They should keep him, and, per NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo, that is the plan. After a full offseason to let his finger heal, there’s no reason to expect we won’t see the player we saw in the first few weeks of 2021.
But given Wilson’s festering discontent and another disappointing season in Seattle that placed Wilson no closer to his goal of winning Super Bowls, will he want to stay? That is the big question.
At the end of the 2019 season, I wrote: “The aftermath of the 2017 season represented a crossroads for the franchise. Following rumors of a possible retirement, Carroll doubled down on his philosophy, hiring Brian Schottenheimer and Ken Norton Jr., using a first-round pick on running back Rashaad Penny and becoming the run-heaviest team in the league in 2018 despite having Wilson at quarterback. The results in the two seasons since then? Zero division titles, one playoff win against a 40-year-old Josh McCown and two playoff exits filled with head-scratching decisions.”
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In the pair of seasons since, we’ve seen two additional years go by with zero playoff wins and an astounding amount of draft capital spent on the defensive side of the ball without even managing to field an average defense.
The cupboard is bare in other places. The offensive line likely needs a complete rebuild (again), with tackles Duane Brown and Brandon Shell along with centers Ethan Pocic and Kyle Fuller slated to become free agents. Though the Seahawks do have money to spend in free agency, needing to replace two tackles while not having a first-round pick is not a great place to be. Given Wilson’s existing concerns about the state of the pass protection, the Seahawks will need to sell Wilson on their plan for putting together a solid group in front of him.
Having DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett is a draw for any quarterback, but there are so many other holes on the roster that it is hard to see how the Seahawks can get back into contention in the future. If Wilson’s goal is to win Super Bowls, it shouldn’t surprise anyone if he decides his best shot is somewhere else unless there are major changes in Seattle during the offseason.
But will there be? For now, we sit and wait.
(Photo of Russell Wilson: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
