The Seahawks managed to win the Super Bowl last year. Obviously that’s worthy of praise, but perhaps the biggest victor in the discourse was general manager John Schneider. He had never done anything without Pete Carroll before, the draft track record had run hot-and-cold. Mike MacDonald was his head coaching hire, and he nailed pick after pick in creating a Super Bowl winner. Jaxson Smith-Njigba, Devon Witherspoon, Nick Emmanwori, Byron Murphy II. He made what was regarded as a pretty bold move by letting Geno Smith go for Sam Darnold. It all paid off in spades, and Schneider likely moved himself firmly into the Hall of Fame conversation with it.
It’s impossible to keep everyone happy in the aftermath, but the Seahawks have returned an awful lot of last year’s Super Bowl starters. Everybody but Coby Bryant and Kenneth Walker, in fact. (Riq Woolen and Boye Mafe also got paid, but they didn’t start.) Last season’s offensive resurgence champion, Klint Kubiak, left for the Raiders head coaching gig. There was nothing they could do about Kubiak, of course, but it was a bit of a hot take to let Walker leave when the Seahawks could have mustered a franchise tag, especially given Zach Charbonnet‘s playoff ACL tear. And it was an even hotter take to reel in 49ers run game coordinator Brian Fleury as their new offensive coordinator considering he has zero play-calling history.
Schneider won his gut decisions last year. Those two decisions figure to define fantasy football (such as there is fantasy football here beyond Smith-Njigba) for the Seahawks this year.
▶ 2025 Seattle Seahawks Stats (Rank)
- Points per game: 28.4 (3rd)
- Total yards per game: 351.4 (8th)
- Plays per game: 59.7 (21st)
- Dropbacks per game: 33.1 (31st)
- Dropback EPA per play: 0.14 (8th)
- Designed rush attempts per game: 29.9 (1st)
- Rush EPA per play: -0.08 (22nd)
▶ How will new offensive coordinator Brian Fleury run this show?
The answer has mostly appeared to be “with continuity.” Kubiak was a card-carrying member of the Shanaclan, and Fleury looks likely to do much of the same. ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler reported that there would be more pre-snap motion and shifts this season. Beyond that, I’m uncomfortable speculating about how good of a playcaller he may or may not be.
The dirty secret of the Seahawks offense last year is that the non-Walker running game still wasn’t very effective. Seattle had a -3.9 percent DVOA last year, 15th in the NFL, but a lot of that is tied up in the fact that Walker broke 105 tackles last year in just 252 touches — the best rate in the NFL per FTN. Charbonnet was reliable and managed better raw DVOA numbers by being the goal-line back, but they aren’t anywhere near the same kind of player.
Perhaps there are tweaks from the 49ers running game that could be beneficial for this backfield — the 49ers actually also had a surprisingly rough season running the ball despite Christian McCaffrey being healthy all year. We can definitely see that kind of boost being helpful for the unit as a whole and we imagine that was what Schneider was seeking out.
▶ Passing Game
QB: Sam Darnold, Drew Lock/Jalen Milroe
WR: Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Jake Bobo
WR: Rashid Shaheed, Tory Horton
WR: Cooper Kupp, Emmanuel Henderson Jr.
TE: A.J. Barner, Elijah Arroyo
Smith-Njigba is rightfully being selected as a high first-round pick. My radar is up at least a little bit this year on the potential of him being a bust at that ADP. The volume will definitely be there, but a new offensive coordinator and a non-elite quarterback could whittle down a 119/1,793/10 season into something like 105/1,500/8 without me batting an eye. Seattle also deferred to Smith-Njigba by essentially barely featuring Rashid Shaheed at all after a midseason trade, and there are already plenty of murmurs that they want Shaheed more involved after he inked a $51 million contract with the Seahawks this offseason.
The give-and-take here could have Seattle’s passing game a little more spread out than it was last year. Deep shot timing is often the hardest thing to get right without a full training camp, and Darnold and Shaheed will be looking to get closer on the same page this year. Shaheed, going outside the top 150 picks on some sites, is basically free in shallow leagues. Given his history with the Saints in 2023 and what looked to be happening in 2024 and 2025 before injury and a trade, respectively, derailed things, we think that’s an interesting late-round flier. Smith-Njigba will easily remain the main weapon here, but we could see some Cooper Kupp targets shift to Shaheed and the explosive upside of a player who can take it to the house on any play should keep him in the FLEX conversation, at worst, all year.
Alright, we had our fun, let’s eat our vegetables. Darnold made it to a QB14 finish last year almost exclusively by playing 17 games. He crossed 300 yards twice in 17 starts and threw more than two touchdowns three times. He offers nothing in the running game. Congrats to him on the Super Bowl (tone: sincere), but he’s maxed out as a superflex fantasy QB2 and this team wants to run the ball. This defense is too good to really get involved in the kind of shootouts he’d need to rank better.
Kupp has had a great career, but he’s 33 and could only really deliver the gritty elements to the passing offense last year. A.J. Barner is a hell of a blocker but figures to sit in the TE2 range without much of a ceiling, and Elijah Arroyo, in theory, should carve further into his role this year. Arroyo isn’t guaranteed enough work to be a useful TE2 in his own right at this stage. We’re sure at some point Tory Horton will be healthy, but he’s got a ways to climb up the depth chart before we’re talking about starting him in fantasy football.
▶ Running Game
RB: Jadarian Price, Zach Charbonnet (injured), George Holani, Emanuel Wilson
OL (L-R): Charles Cross, Grey Zabel, Jalen Sundell, Anthony Bradford, Abraham Lucas
The Charbonnet injury — the Seahawks haven’t really timelined it but it’s hard to believe that he’ll be back before November given it was a January torn ACL — give us the rare situation where the rookie running back could be more valuable earlier in the season than later. Price is coming off the board with an ADP around 50-70 on most sites. I do sincerely believe that the Seahawks plan to use George Holani on third downs, but I’m not sure if he’s a real threat to Price on early downs or not. Given that, he and Emanuel Wilson being down in the RB70 free zone makes them feel like nice cheap stabs in a deeper league with some real upside.
How I personally expect this to play out is for Price to handle the majority of the early-down work before Charbonnet comes back — I don’t think the Seahawks would have felt a rush to draft him in the first round if they were content to make this a huge committee. I actually liked Wilson’s work in Green Bay a lot last year, but it’s hard to take a one-year, $1.595 million contract as an indication that the Seahawks like him as anything more than a depth back. The Charbonnet comeback is going to be fascinating. We don’t have a ton of data on players coming back from that serious of an injury in January. I’m inclined to bet against it going well, which is why I’ll probably have Price ahead of close-by-ADP backs like Bhayshul Tuten and Bucky Irving on my draft board. Ultimately, Price is still a risky pick, but a risky pick on a team that wants to run the ball and probably needs him to work out well to do it.
Without better news on Charbonnet that offers much more optimistic timelines, he’s merely an end-of-draft IR-and-stash in standard leagues.
▶ 2026 Seattle Seahawks Win Total
DraftKings Over/Under: 10.5
Pick: Over (-115)
It’s a tough schedule on paper, but there was nothing fluky about what the Seahawks did last year. I’d want to wait until closer to the season to wait out potential injuries — on defense-heavy teams this weighs much more heavily in my consideration of when to bet — but if you asked me over/under right now I’d have to say over is the lean.
