The Pittsburgh game was the final straw. Battered at home, with Steelers fans belting out a chorus in your stadium. That was the moment it became clear the Pete Carroll era would conclude at the end of the 2023 season.

A year on and despite changing the whole staff and sections of the roster, the Seahawks have had four similar home experiences. They aren’t carbon copies. The Steelers ran the ball down Seattle’s throat despite having Mason Rudolph propping up the quarterback position. The defense this year is in a much better place than it was 12 months ago.

Even so, the Giants (!!!), 49ers, Bills and Packers have all marched into Seattle and delivered a whooping. The Seahawks are staring at another probable 9-8 season for a third year in a row. If Sam Howell has to finish the season as the starting quarterback, 8-9 is very possible.

The question is, how willing are the Seahawks to stare this situation down and be sufficiently active to fix the problems?

I’m not suggesting they’ve been inactive. Firing Carroll was a franchise-altering move. They’ve adjusted the roster effectively during the season to enable the defense to take a big step forward, even if some issues still remain.

More is required though. They need to retain an aggressive mindset. They can’t have a ‘move the chairs around’ off-season, otherwise they’re going to be stuck in the 9-8 range.

We’ve seen how far behind the Packers and Bills they are. We saw the 49ers, when they still had a semblance of health, handle the Seahawks in the first game between the two teams.

They are not close to being a serious contender. Nobody who watched that game last night is going to take the Seahawks seriously. They will be an afterthought in the national discussion and rightly so. If they do make the playoffs, they’ll be seen as a traffic cone for a superior team to drive around.

As a franchise we’re all sat here laughing at the 49ers after their years of NFC domination has come to an end because of injuries. We question how good the Rams actually are, as they out-gun the Bills in a way Seattle can only dream of.

Forget them. Honesty and an inward looking focus is required.

Everyone can see it starts with Seattle’s offensive line but it doesn’t end there. They need three new interior starters. They’ve been highly aggressive to fix aspects of the defensive line, to their credit. Two second round picks on Boye Mafe and Derick Hall, the #16 pick on Byron Murphy, trading a haul to rent Leonard Williams before paying him a massive extension, paying Uchenna Nwosu, bringing in veterans Jarran Reed and Johnathan Hankins.

They need that same energy for the other side of the ball in the upcoming off-season and anything less will be unacceptable. The Seahawks are long beyond the afforded time to try and build an O-line slowly. The pressure should be on. After failing to build a good line over three drafts, to the point that zero positions currently feel secure, they now have to go out and make things happen.

John Schneider and his staff may well turn around and say, ‘go on then, how do we do that?’ Nobody disputes that it is difficult to build a competent offensive line. Very few teams have pulled it off. Yet the Seahawks have been especially poor over the years in this area and time has run out for this particular GM and front office to play the long game. They have to put a line on the field that is not an abject disaster.

The Packers last night had a seventh round pick at left tackle, two second round blog favourites at left guard and center, a third rounder at right guard and a fourth round blog favourite at right tackle. They gave up zero sacks. They’ve enabled Josh Jacobs to have a good season, while Jordan Love is having a decent year too.

Schneider is a Ron Wolf protégé. I’ve spoken frequently to people who worked with Wolf and they all say the same thing — Wolf preached the importance of the trenches first and foremost. That’s his core philosophy. How can it be that Schneider, from the Green Bay school of scouting, cannot get close to addressing an issue that has dogged this team for years?

Schneider, contrary to what his biggest detractors will say, is not a bad GM. Far from it. But he and the Seahawks on the whole — including scouts and coaches — have done a really bad job on the offensive line for too long. He needs to fix this immediately and it can’t be with the next Laken Tomlinson, B.J. Finney, Bradley Sowell, Brandon Shell or Cedric Obguehi. They can’t afford to spend a third round pick in 2025 on a guard who ends up being a third stringer. Solutions are required.

Meanwhile, let’s have an open and honest conversation about Charles Cross. He hasn’t played well all year. It’s been assumed by too many people that he is the one position that is sorted on the line. He is still not strong enough and the same issues we saw at Mississippi State are showing up in year three of his NFL career.

Cross has now given up the second most pressures in the league among offensive tackles, behind only New England’s struggling Demontrey Jacobs. He’s overtaken Jacobs to lead the NFL in hurries conceded. He’s given up five sacks in his last five games. He has not taken a step forward this season.

Let’s be clear though — this isn’t just an offensive line problem. It’s a big problem, obviously, one that has lingered for far too long. But it’s not the only problem.

This kind of performance takes a village:

The brilliant Brady Henderson wrote an article on Sunday discussing whether Ryan Grubb ‘was past his first-year growing pains’:

Over the first nine games, Seattle had the NFL’s second-lowest designed rush rate at 31.2%. Over the last four games, they’re 14th in that metric 39.9%. That timeframe has also coincided with a decrease in their shotgun percentage, a staple of college offenses that Grubb leaned heavily on out of the gates. The Seahawks have been in shotgun on 68.5% of their plays (19th) over the last four games, down from 80.8% (fourth) before the bye.

Here’s the problem. The Seahawks are a NFL franchise. The reason most teams don’t appoint coaches who’ve never worked in the NFL before is because there will be a steep learning curve. This isn’t NFL Europe where players and coaches get time to figure things out. It’s the elite level of the sport.

I understand why the Seahawks took a chance on Grubb. He was part of an exciting, attractive Washington team that made the most out of a top-10 pick at quarterback, the best offensive line in the NCAA last season and three NFL receivers (including another top-10 pick).

They didn’t have a great pool of candidates to pick from. They were late in the hiring cycle to speak to offensive coordinators. If it was going to come down to people like Chip Kelly, Eric Bieniemy, Grubb and Tanner Engstrand (who has never called plays in his career), there’s no obvious home-run appointment. They took a chance and fair play for that. I won’t criticise the decision.

However, the learning curve just seems too steep at this point. The Seahawks do not appear to have a consistent plan of action, they are clearly incapable of finding ways to make life a little bit easier for the struggling offensive line, they are not making the most of their weapons apart from Jaxson Smith-Njigba and their play-calling is confusing to the point of frustration.

Mookie Alexander breaks it down perfectly here:

Play-action passing was once again scarcely used. Grubb loves half-field reads with route concepts 10-15 yards down the field on 3rd and short, which is just asinine without safety valves to get the ball out quickly. He won’t commit to a run game even when there are signs of success. There was a stretch of 19 consecutive passes called from Geno’s final drive until the Zach Charbonnet touchdown. Seriously?

And there’s this from Griffin Sturgeon:

The camera often panned to Mike Macdonald during offensive drives last night looking confused by what he was seeing. That’s been a common sight.

I just don’t think this is working. I’m speculating but I don’t think Macdonald thinks it’s working either. I don’t think his vision and philosophy for the broader team is being established. It’s the NFL. You don’t get to practise being a coordinator. The Seahawks need someone, especially with a defensive-minded Head Coach, who doesn’t need a year or two to get into the groove — with no actual guarantee they’ll reach the promise land.

I appreciate this is hard. Ben Johnson’s don’t grow on trees. Candidates who were trendy a year ago, like Bobby Slowik, have not had great seasons. But increasingly this feels like the Seahawks attempted a three-pointer last off-season and it bounced off the rim. Maybe it’s time to find someone who can get an easy lay-up and just establish a level of competent, consistent offense?

Changes are inevitable to the staff as we’ve talked about before. Macdonald didn’t bring a bunch of guys with him. This was a team of strangers thrown together. Adjustments will be made in the off-season, it’s just a question of who stays, who goes and who comes in.

Finally, the Seahawks also need a proper plan at quarterback.

This isn’t some ‘Geno Smith is terrible’ argument or anything like that. He has always been a decent bridge to whatever was next post-Russell Wilson era. There are far worse quarterbacks starting in the NFL.

As we keep saying though, the Seahawks have a bridge quarterback without anything to actually bridge to. He isn’t the long-term option, despite the protestations of some online. He’ll be 35 next season.

Smith has good aspects of his game — including impressive physical qualities and an aggressive nature that serves him well. However, we can’t just ignore how bad he has been for two years in the red zone. He’s 22nd in the league for touchdowns (14) yet third in the league for interceptions (12). His QBR of 52.8 ranks 23rd and his quarterback rating of 89.9 ranks 19th.

The Seahawks shouldn’t just ‘get rid’ of Geno Smith for the sake of it and go with someone like Howell who, to put it bluntly, appears to have no long-term future in the league. They can’t just keep muddling along though, kicking the can down the road with Smith as the starter while not seriously addressing the longer-term future.

I think they have two options. Upgrade in the veteran market and/or draft someone to develop behind Smith so there’s actually a progression plan in place. At the moment it just feels like the Seahawks are going year-to-year with no actual direction to contention, in part because the quarterback position isn’t stable beyond the current season.

I don’t know for sure that Sam Darnold is superior to Smith but the reality is he has twice as many touchdowns this year having played a game fewer, despite being sacked the same amount of times going into week 15. His PFF grade, QBR and QB rating are superior and he’s seven years younger.

If he’s available on a Baker Mayfield type deal, they have to at least consider it — probably alongside promoting Jake Peetz to offensive coordinator to retain the McVay offense he is clearly comfortable in. If you fear Darnold is a product of Kevin O’Connell’s talent as a coach, rather than a product of simply no longer playing for the Jets or Panthers, this would at least provide some basis for hope that his success would transfer to Seattle.

It’s not a perfect plan but it’s a plan. The low year-one cap-hit would free up some money to spend on the offensive line. Of course, with this looking like a limited 2025 quarterback class, Darnold’s earning potential might go through the roof. He might be too expensive.

If he isn’t an option or if you’d simply prefer to roll with Smith, then selecting a quarterback in the fourth draft since the Wilson trade has to be a critical aim. Who though? It’s been announced today that Drew Allar is returning to Penn State next season. Who are you taking that could realistically be seen as a viable starter for the future?

I thought Allar and Garrett Nussmeier would appeal to Schneider but both are returning to college football. I’ve thought in the past that he’d be attracted to Quinn Ewers’ natural talent but that’s a harder sell now given the way he’s played in 2024.

As with the offensive line though, eventually you get to a point where you start to think, come on now. Is a fourth season of Geno Smith accompanied by Drew Lock or Sam Howell any different really that consistently failing to properly address the offensive line? If both areas really are impossible to rectify, should we just pause any excitement or ambition for the franchise indefinitely? Don’t they have to try different things? Speculate to accumulate a little? The perfect situation may never arrive.

For what it’s worth, I think they will make changes. To the staff. At quarterback. To the line. It’s just a question of how it looks. I wouldn’t be shocked if we see Peetz at OC, Darnold at QB and high picks used on the offensive line. I don’t anticipate mere tweaks. Not after experiencing nights like last night. Not after the Seahawks showed they were willing to make the big call by firing Carroll.

I hope I’m right, too. The franchise needs another jolt. Mike Macdonald has got the defense playing at a competitive level, even if it’s not the finished product. This off-season, an aggressive approach to the offense is needed — including moves on the offensive line, coaching staff and at quarterback.