The Seahawks offense ranks dead last by DVOA since Week 7.
In a perhaps unexpected twist to the Seattle Seahawks’ 2024 season, the defense is carrying the offense, and they’re the main reason Seattle is in position to win the NFC West instead of setting up tee times and vacation trips.
The Seahawks offense under first-year coordinator Ryan Grubb is struggling. They’re worse by EPA/play, DVOA, points per drive, and several other advanced metrics than any of Shane Waldron’s three seasons as Seahawks OC. Believe it or not, the only area of significant statistical improvement from the 2022-2023 seasons is the red zone, but we’ll save that for another article.
Grubb’s offense had a promising start to the season, particularly the 500+ yards of offense and 38 first downs achieved in a 42-29 shootout loss to what has been an elite Detroit Lions defense. It’s been pretty ugly since then and it’s possible that we’ve already witnessed this offense’s peak for the year.
No stat is more indicative of how bad the Seahawks offense has been than this article from FTN Fantasy’s Aaron Schatz, aka the godfather of DVOA. When splitting performance in half(ish) from Weeks 1-6 to Weeks 7-13, no offense has had a more pronounced dip in efficiency than the Seahawks.
Biggest Offensive Declines:
Seattle from 9.1% (10) to -18.3% (32)
Atlanta from 14.8% (7) to -2.4% (19)
Indianapolis from 2.1% (14) to -14.8% (26)
San Francisco from 17.3% (5) to 1.3% (17)
Over the totality of the season, the Seahawks offense is 20th overall (17th pass, 25th rush) but 23rd in weighted DVOA, which de-emphasizes early-season games.
What’s alarming is that the parameters used by Schatz for Weeks 7-13 include the 34-14 win over the Atlanta Falcons, which saw the Seahawks score 27 points on offense and put up a net positive game by DVOA.
Extracting the game-by-game data, the inability to run the ball is the main culprit and it’s not even close. They’ve not posted a positive rushing day by DVOA since Week 4 versus the Detroit Lions, and they’ve had single-game rush DVOAs of -30% or worst in four of the last six games. The passing offense has been close to neutral or a net negative in three of those six games.
On the flip side, Seattle’s boasted the sixth-best defense by DVOA since Week 7, which underscores how vital the defense has been in turning the season around.
If you took out the Falcons game, the Seahawks are 28th in EPA/play (which doesn’t account for opponent quality), 19th in EPA/dropback and 32nd in EPA/rush. This offense is too talented to have a mediocre pass game and a rock-bottom rushing attack.
While the offensive line is certainly a major culprit for the poor showings win or lose, this is neither the first bad offensive line nor even the most egregiously poor offensive line the Seahawks have within the last 10 seasons. These are the worst results we’ve seen out of any Seahawks offense since Darrell Bevell’s first season in 2011, when the Seahawks were 20th overall (19th pass, 20th rush). Of course, Seattle leveled up the following year by drafting Russell Wilson, providing an instant upgrade from Tarvaris Jackson and Charlie Whitehurst. I don’t think there are too many quarterbacks above Geno Smith who can overcome the deficiencies of this year’s offense.
There was always a risk to hiring Grubb and former Washington Huskies OL coach Scott Huff to go straight to the NFL with zero prior NFL experience. The college and pro games are fundamentally different, including in something as simple as the disparity in hashmark placement. If the Seahawks do not fix their offensive woes over the remainder of the season—spoiler: they play a hard schedule of defenses over the rest of December—I think it’s distinctly possible that Grubb and Huff are both one-and-dones on this coaching staff.