With one game left to play, the Seattle Seahawks 2024 campaign has been effectively ended. On Sunday night, the Seahawks were officially eliminated from the playoffs, as the Los Angeles Rams claimed the NFC West championship due to strength of victory tiebreaker. Seattle’s only path to the playoffs was by winning the division outright, but they were in a predicament where they needed plenty of help to do so.
After the Arizona Cardinals failed to upset the Rams on Saturday night, the Seahawks’ fate rested in the hands of the Jets, Dolphins, Packers, Falcons and Lions. Seattle needed at least three wins from those teams to negate LA’s strength of victory tiebreaker and force a Week 18 showdown for the division.
Miami did it’s job, defeating Cleveland, which kept Seattle alive. But the Jets were blown out by the Bills 40-7, the Packers comeback bid ended with a narrow 27-25 loss to the Vikings, and the Falcons squandered a 17-7 halftime lead to lose 30-24 in overtime to the Commanders.
As rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels found his tight end Zach Ertz for Washington’s game winning touchdown to punch their ticket for the playoffs, the team in Seattle, Washington’s season concluded. The outcome of the Lions vs 49ers game means absolutely nothing now.
The 2024 campaign was a frustrating one for Seattle. In many ways, this team did improve from the last two. The defense got better, Jaxon Smith-Njigba emerged as a legitimate force, and head coach Mike Macdonald appears to be the real deal. The Seahawks even have a chance to earn their first 10-win season since 2020.
Sadly, it is all for nothing as the team was eliminated from the playoffs one week earlier. Seattle had made it to Week 18 for a shot at getting into the tournament in the last two years. Now, they are done one before Week 17 even officially concludes. That is, no matter how you dice it, regression.
The Seahawks will soon enter an offseason with plenty of questions, mainly on the offensive side of the ball. What will they do at quarterback as Geno Smith enters the final year of his contract? Similarly, what about DK Metcalf who also only has one year left? How can they fix this offensive line? Do they need to make a change at offensive coordinator?
For the next few days and weeks, there will be plenty to unpack with this team that failed to make the playoffs for the third time in the last four years. The postmortem of the 2024 Seattle Seahawks has only just begun.