The Seahawks’ 2024 season will end where it began: SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif.
On Aug. 10, Mike Macdonald coached his first game of any kind for Seattle in a preseason contest against the Chargers. (The Seahawks won 16-3, in case you’ve forgotten).
Sunday, he’ll close out his rookie year on the same field when Seattle plays the Rams at 1:25 p.m.
It’s not a preseason game, but in many ways it will have the same feel.
The Rams clinched the NFC West over the Seahawks last week by beating Arizona and then getting the right number of wins from other teams to secure the strength of victory tiebreaker.
With nothing on the line other than seeding — the Rams could be the No. 3 or the No. 4 in the NFC, but apparently don’t care which they get — LA coach Sean McVay is erring on the side of health and announced this week that a handful of key players will not participate.
Among them are seven offensive starters, including quarterback Matthew Stafford and star receivers Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua.
That news caused the betting line to shift sharply, from the Rams favored by 2.5 points (or more, depending on the line) to Seattle now favored by 7.
And Macdonald all week has made clear the Seahawks are playing to win, even if there’s nothing but some statistical milestones to play for.
He’s cited as one goal Seattle getting to 10 wins for what would be its first double-digit win season since finishing 12-4 in 2020.
He’s also said he simply thinks it’s important to head into the offseason on a positive note.
“We’ve got a standard here of what we’re trying to build,” Macdonald said. “You can’t let all of outside forces affect how we play and our mentality. It’s just not how we’re going to operate. That’s soft, frankly, so that’s not what we’re going to be.”
The game will also give Macdonald, general manager John Schneider and other decision-makers one last glimpse of where the Seahawks are heading into the offseason.
A Rams team that won’t be fielding its regular roster obviously isn’t the most accurate measuring stick.
But that may make it even more important for the Seahawks to look good in their season finale.
That’s especially true for an offense that has stumbled too often down the stretch.
After ranking as high as fifth in total offense in the NFL after the fourth week of the season, the Seahawks are now 14th. A running attack that has never really gotten going ranks 30th, while a passing game that was ranked first for a while is now down to seventh.
Most critically, Seattle is just 19th in points per game at 21.6, barely ahead of the 21.4 of last season.
The Seahawks have been held to 20 or fewer in four of the past seven games, and were held to a season-low six points a week ago Thursday at Chicago, winning only because the defense held the Bears to three in what was the lowest-scoring game this season in the NFL.
And that’s in a year when the Seahawks are spending just over $151 million on their offense, eighth-most in the NFL.
All of that has raised increasing questions about the future of offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb, who was hired by the Seahawks to much fanfare last February following his dynamite two-year run at the University of Washington.
“Frustrated, happy, excited, all at the same time,” Grubb said this week when asked how he feels the offense has performed. “And I mean that. I know there’s certainly people that are probably sharing my frustration, and our fans deserve the best. I think that we have a great team. I think that there are times where we line up and play people and certainly some of the best teams in the NFL. I don’t feel like there are people we watch on film and it’s like, ‘Oh my god, how are we going to move the ball on these guys?’ I feel excited every time we get an opportunity to play some of the best in the league. I really feel like we’re on the cusp of that and that we can do something really special.
“I know right now, those are just words and that doesn’t help anything at this point when the season’s going to be over this weekend, unfortunately, which hurts. I know what this team’s put into it and that we really feel like with everything that’s happened this season that we really had plenty of chances to put ourselves in the postseason. So, it’s difficult to see that.”
Macdonald on Friday seemed to offer something of a defense of Grubb.
“You’ve got to put yourself in his shoes,” said Macdonald, who calls the defense. “This is a guy coming in and trying to learn all the personnel and all the coordinators and the systems and that’s why we structured our staff the way we did. And that’s part of my responsibility to make sure that he’s confident in understanding what we’re trying to attack. So it’s a team effort and so he’s been great understanding that, ‘Hey, I haven’t gone against this kind of [defensive] tree’ or how it’s built and understanding on how we want to attack. So he’s grown a lot [out] of that.”
Giving players a third offense to learn in three years, though, might be something the Seahawks will try to avoid, especially with a team that will again be in win-now mode in 2025 (assuming Geno Smith returns for a season in which he will turn 35.)
But those are questions that the team will begin answering Sunday night and in the days and weeks ahead after what they hope is one last moment to celebrate, even if they’d hoped they’d be playing for the NFC West title on Sunday and not just some temporary bragging rights.
“When your fate’s in people’s hands, it’s never gonna be good,” safety Julian Love said. “So as much as we wanted to have our shot at it, that was kind of the nail in the coffin, unfortunately. So we’re just going to go out this week and compete.
“… Still want to represent who Mike is and who this team is. This team won’t be the same next year, so just want to go out with a bang.”
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