The Seattle Seahawks are either going to surprise a lot of analysts this season, or we're going to feel awfully silly around Week 5. Everything we know about new head coach Mike Macdonald how he's heloing this team develop tells us that this is going to be a much-improved group over what we saw the last few years under Pete Carroll. Heading into the regular season, we're projecting an 11-6 finish for this team.
Not everyone agrees, though and some analysts still have them on the lower end of their NFL power rankings. For example, Vinny Iyer at The Sporting News has Seattle ranked 24th going into the new season in his.
"Mike Macdonald will have an immediate influence on their pass rush and secondary play. Likewise, Ryan Grubb will get more out of Geno Smith in a creative, uptempo passing game with good receivers. Seattle also feels like either big winners or sliding rebuilders."
By now you should know that we're firmly on the big-winners side of that debate. It may take a while for it all to click on the field, but Macdonald clearly knows what he's doing schematically and his rock-star hire at offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb does, as well.
Injuries can do in any NFL team, even very promising ones. That said, to our eye these Seahawks look to have an absolute basement of 8-9 and a ceiling of 12-5.
