3 Biggest Offseason Questions Still Looming for the Seattle Seahawks

Dwight White of the old Steel Curtain Pittsburgh Steelersonce said that there's two kinds of Super Bowl teams nobody remembers: The teams that don't win the Super Bowl at all, and the teams that only win one.

Now, the 2026 Seattle Seahawks are trying to become the ninth franchise, and the 10th team (those Steelers did it twice) to follow one Super Bowl-winning season with another.

On the surface, it seems like they've got a pretty good shot. The players they lost in free agency aren't irreplaceable, and through there was some brain-drain as you would expect from most Super Bowl winners (the most obvious being offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, who left to become the Las Vegas Raiders' head coach, and has been replaced by former San Francisco 49ers assistant Brian Fleury), but with head coach Mike Macdonald and general manager John Schneider up top - Schneider is the only GM in pro football history to win two Super Bowls with the same franchise, but with completely different rosters - all is well in hand.

And nobody in the Emerald City is thinking about the past at this point.

"I have reached out to some people who have won back-to-back championships," Macdonald told me in a recent interview for the Athlon Sports NFL preview magazine. "And it's been great advice, but I think the thing that we learned last year is like, look, we want to do it our way with how we go about our business every day, and what's best for the Seahawks. It's great to learn from other people, but by no means are we trying to copy other people's style or trying to do it that way. The overarching thing is, it's the same destination, but the journey is completely different with a completely different set of people.

"Even for the people that were here last year… I mean, it's different viewpoints, and it's different experiences that are under their belts. We're going to have a lot of new people joining us from other teams who lost some great players. So to me, we're saying that instead of running it back or defending anything, we want to run our process forward."

Running it forward is a great soundbite. But if the Seahawks want to align their reality with that possibility, they'll need to answer these three questions.

Is Sam Darnold now a franchise quarterback?

The machinations of Sam Darnold's 2025 season could be summed up in his three games against the Los Angeles Rams, Seattle's chief rival. In Week 11's 21-19 loss, Darnold was a disaster - he threw four interceptions and no touchdowns, and Chris Shula's defense had him on a string. Darnold threw late under pressure over and over, defenders were jumping his throws to a ridiculous degree, and at that point, Darnold looked like the former bust he had been with the New York Jets, Carolina Panthers, and Minnesota Vikings before the Seahawks signed him to a three-year, $105.5 million contract with $55 million guaranteed.

Seattle's 38-37 overtime win in Week 15 was a bit better from a quarterback perspective - Darnold completed 22 of 34 passes for 270 yards, two touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 84.2, and he led a major comeback - but it wasn't until the Seahawks' 31-27 NFC Championship win that Darnold looked like the guy Seattle paid. Then, he completed 25 of 36 passes for 346 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 127.8.

That was the Sam Darnold the Seahawks wanted and needed to get to (and through) the Super Bowl.

Now in Year 2, the team is expecting Darnold to improve and take his leadership to the next level.

"Sam doesn't care about the obstacles," Macdonald said after the Super Bowl. "Everybody's made a narrative about this guy. They have tried to put a story and a label on who he is as a person, who he is as a quarterback. He does not care. He's [been] the same guy every day since he showed up. He's so steadfast, he's a great teammate, his teammates love him. All he's done since he's walked in the door is be a tremendous player on our football team, and a tremendous leader who's the same every day. That's who he is, and that's how we need to talk about him moving forward."

Can Jadarian Price be the main man?

The Seahawks did lose bellcow running back and Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker in free agency to the Kansas City Chiefs, and they have backup Zach Charbonnet coming off a torn ACL he suffered in the postseason. But none of that mattered to the team when they had the opportunity to select Notre Dame running back Jadarian Price with the 32nd overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft.

That was an easy call for all involved.

"Man … instant acceleration, vision, cutback ability, but his ability to work it back, not just completely bouncing all the time," Schneider said of Price after the pick was made. "Just [cut] it back inside. And then, his contact balance. He has home run speed. He has a lot of explosive runs. He'd returned three kickoffs for touchdowns in his career. Two this year. That's such a unique feel. The USC game was ridiculous. That instant acceleration."

In that USC game, a 34-24 Week 7 win for Notre Dame, Price gained 87 yards and scored a rushing touchdown on 13 carries, and he added 113 yards on two kick returns, including a 100-yard touchdown - one of two kick returns Price returned for touchdowns in the 2025 season. His efforts were somewhat obscured because third-overall pick of the Arizona CardinalsJeremiyah Love gained 228 yards and scored a touchdown on 24 carries, adding 37 receiving yards on five catches), but the Seahawks got the memo.

John Schneider called Jadarian Price's game against USC "ridiculous." 200 total yards between the rushing and the kick returns would be why. pic.twitter.com/aBN9yQkESe

— Doug Farrar (@NFL_DougFarrar) May 31, 2026

The only person higher on Price's potential than the Seahawks may be Love himself, as he told me in a recent interview.

There are already a lot of scouting reports out there on Notre Dame RB Jadarian Price. I thought it would be nifty to get one from Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love. pic.twitter.com/6JlCTQTHuC

— Doug Farrar (@NFL_DougFarrar) April 22, 2026

"I tell everybody that JD can do everything I can do," Love said. "I think the reason that JD isn't viewed in the light I am is because, you know, I've had the spotlight at Notre Dame. I've been the main premier back, and I feel like JD could have gone anywhere else in the country and been the main premier back. He's a great running back. And he has some tools in his bag that I don't have.

"I think JD's feet are faster than mine. He's a little bit more explosive than me from his first step. He can break more tackles than me, too. So, JD has a lot that he'll be able to use at the next level, and bring to a team so that they can have success. JD's got the same work ethic, you know? I've been in a room with JD for three years. So I know him outside the game and inside the game.

"He's a great person, and he's also a good football player. Whichever team is blessed to get JD, I mean, they'll basically get me in another form. Because if you put him in the right positions, and you allow him to be himself, he's going to be great. That's what I would say to NFL teams. And that's what I've told them every time they ask me about JD. Because it's the truth. I've been around him. I got to see him work. And then we've also been coached by some great coaches."

It's time for Jadarian Price to step into the spotlight, and he has the perfect team with which to do that.

Are the edge-rushers edgy enough?

Last season, the Seahawks ranked first overall in Defensive DVOA, and they ranked sixth in the league in pressure rate at 26.1%. Seattle did have talent at the edges, but overall, the pass rush was more about the philosophy Macdonald brings to the table regarding line games and stunts to confuse opposing offensive lines as it does about the individuals on the field.

"We believe that when you do move the front, especially in passing situations, that creates the most pressure," Macdonald told me in that NFL preview magazine interview. "But it requires you to play together, and it requires you to play in this kind of synergistic way, and have that type of attitude to do it. You can't just run stunts for the hell of running stunts.

"It's a chemistry thing about how you play off one another. You don't just run them in silos, if that makes sense. It's all connected with who wins and when, and how you overlap. That takes a lot of time on task, and chemistry, and buy-in, and all that stuff. But we do feel like that is the best way to operate, rather than just letting a guy win and then we play off of that."

It worked well enough. Veteran DeMarcus Lawrence led the team with 10 sacks and 65 total pressures, and Uchenna Nwosu finished second with nine and 55, respectively. But it could also be said that the defense doesn't have that one or two alpha edge pass-rushers who force offenses to kick everything over to their area - if the Seahawks do have a guy like that, it's Leonard Williams, and he lines up all over the place.

Losing Boye Mafe to the Cincinnati Bengals in free agency was a bit of a hit, but maybe fourth-year man Derick Hall, who had two sacks in the Super Bowl, is ready to take the proverbial next step. Veteran Dante Fowler Jr., who had three sacks and 30 pressures for the Dallas Cowboys last season, was the only offseason acquisition at the position in free agency or the draft.

It's not that the Seahawks have nothing on the edge, but the margin for error is a bit different when you rely as much on scheme as talent for quarterback disruption.

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This story was originally published June 18, 2026 at 4:55 AM.