Welcome to the NFC West version of Optimus Fantasy’s Team Previews! Today, we’re looking at the Seattle Seahawks. In order to best know where we’re going, we often need to study where we’ve been. With that in mind, I will cover what the team looked like in 2024, fantasy significant changes to philosophy and personnel, and what I expect from the team in 2025. Your fantasy drafts are coming. Stay ready, so you don’t have to get ready.

The Seattle Seahawks in 2024

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Team Stats
PROE	1.84 +
4th Down Go For It!	15.70
Target GINI	0.5504
Rushing GINI	0.6627
Plays/Game: Offense	60.6

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Let’s start off by defining a few things, shall we?

Note: Any stat highlighted green with a “+” means it’s significantly, at least 1 standard deviation, above average. Any stat highlighted red with a “-“ means it’s significantly below average. If the stat is highlighted in blue and doesn’t have a symbol, it is within the standard deviation for that stat.

PROE – Pass Rate Over Expectation

2nd and 1 for the offense? Sure makes sense to run. 3rd and 12? Yup, absolutely reasonable to pass. PROE measures how often a team passed the ball when we would “expect” them to run. Such as on 2nd and 1. Obviously, this is our expectation, and part of the strategy is to do the unexpected. So it’s not a perfect encapsulation. However, over 17 games, this gives us a general idea of how an offensive coaching staff envisions their offensive strengths.

4th Down – Go For It!

It’s kinda just what it sounds like. Unlike PROE, there’s no “expectation” to this stat. Of all 4th downs, this is how often a team chose to go for it. Higher rates mean an offense has more chances to accumulate fantasy points. Conversely, it’s not as great for kickers. 

Target GINI

This is where my background in economics comes out. Without going too far down the rabbit hole, Target GINI is how concentrated a passing attack is among pass-catching targets. A Target GINI of 1 means every target went to one player. Perfectly evenly distributed targets among players result in a Target GINI of 0. 

Rushing GINI

The same as Target GINI, but for rushing. So a Rushing GINI of 1 means one player had 100% of the rushing attempts. A Rushing GINI of 0 means every player received an equal number of rushing attempts.

“Ok, I get what GINI is, but how is it helpful for us?” You know, you’re really great with these questions. Are you sure you’re not a fantasy football expert? At any rate, these metrics tell us how concentrated or siloed a team’s passing and rushing attacks are. For fantasy, we’re looking for them both to be as close to 1 as possible.

Plays/Game: Offense

Literally just what it sounds like, this is an average of how many plays per game a team’s offense runs. The idea is that more offensive plays equal more opportunities for our players to score fantasy points. Simple enough, right?

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Top Performers (HPPR 2024)
Geno Smith	QB12
Zach Charbonnet	RB25
Kenneth Walker	RB27
Jaxon Smith-Njigba	WR10
D.K. Metcalf	WR32
Tyler Lockett	WR67
Noah Fant	TE28
Jason Myers	K9

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Significant Offseason Changes from ’24 to ’25

Lost: Geno Smith, D.K. Metcalf, Tyler Lockett, Noah Fant

Added: Sam Darnold, Cooper Kupp, Tory Horton, Jalen Milroe, Elijah Arroyo, Damien Martinez, Grey Zabel

Those are wild lists of Lost and Added. There’s a full rebuild happening in Seattle, and we’re seeing a full-on youth movement with all those draft picks.

The offensive line was, in a word, ‘offensive’ in 2024. And not in a good way. One good player in OT Charles Cross wasn’t enough to pick up the rest of the unit. Zabel arrives to help shore up the right side of the line, and early returns in preseason are positive. If it doesn’t carry over to the regular season, Seattle’s offensive line will once again be a bottom-5 unit.

Klint Kubiak makes his debut as the Seahawks’ offensive coordinator and hopes to recapture the magic of the first two weeks of 2024 when he was in New Orleans. 

Looking Ahead to the Seattle Seahawks in 2025

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Lou’s Confidence Level 1 – 5
Sam Darnold	1
Kenneth Walker, Zach Charbonnet	3
Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Cooper Kupp, Tory Horton (R)	2
Elijah Arroyo (R)	1
Jason Myers	4

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Lou’s 2025 HPPR Rankings
Sam Darnold	QB27
Kenneth Walker	RB25
Zach Charbonnet	RB56
Jaxon Smith-Njigba	WR29
Cooper Kupp	WR45
Tory Horton (R)	–
Elijah Arroyo (R)	TE36
Jason Myers	–

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Week	Opponent	Expected W/L
1	San Francisco	W
2	@ Pittsburgh	L
3	New Orleans	W
4	@ Arizona	W
5	Tampa Bay	L
6	@ Jacksonville	L
7	Houston	L
8	BYE	–
9	@ Washington	L
10	Arizona	L
11	@ Los Angeles Rams	L
12	@ Tennessee	L
13	Minnesota	W
14	@ Atlanta	L
15	Indianapolis	L
16	Los Angeles Rams	W
17	@ Carolina	L

Lou’s projected 2025 “fantasy season” record: 5-11

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OK, Now For the Important (Non-Kicker) Seahawks

“Lou, you didn’t rank Jason Myers!” Very astute, and you are correct. I’m a big believer in saying, “I don’t know,” when someone asks me about things I’m ignorant about. I’m kicker-dumb. So if you’re here looking for insight on kickers, I’m very sorry. Seattle’s gonna have a bad offense in ’25, a really bad offense. Is that a good or bad thing for a kicker? I dunno, but someone does, I’m sure.

No, I do not believe in Sam Darnold. I want to be very clear about that. I hope he does well and proves me wrong; he seems like a decent enough dude. “But Lou, he was QB8 last year, what’s not to love?” It’s a good point and one that deserves to be addressed. In 2024, there was one reason Darnold excelled the way he did, and that’s his former head coach, Kevin O’Connell (KOC). 

We’ve seen KOC lift such luminaries as Nick Mullens, Joshua Dobbs, and even Jaren Hall to…well, it’s not relevance, but I’ll go with “out of the quagmire of terribleness” in which they resided. In the final two games of the Vikings’ season against the Lions and Rams, we saw the old Sam Darnold rear his ugly head. He was inaccurate, hesitant, and turned down wide-open throws. Oh, and he couldn’t deal with pressure. It was shades of the “seeing ghosts” Darnold from his days with the New York Jets. If you choose to believe his first 16 games and not his final two, I can’t stop you. But I will warn you.

Unfortunately, Sam Darnold going back to his haunted mansion days means depressed numbers for his pass-catchers. I want to be clear, I believe Jaxon Smith-Njigba (JSN) is for real. And I want to be equally clear that a suspect offensive line, combined with Darnold’s limitations, will sink his ship this year. Every player becomes a good value at a low enough price, and that holds for JSN as well. His current ADP, according to FantasyPros, is 32nd overall, which is a full 2.5 rounds higher than my ranking. Caveat emptor (for those who don’t speak Latin, “let the buyer beware”).

Man, I’m tired of the doom and gloom. I wanna play a game of “What if?” but with some positive connotations. What if the offensive line is at least solid this year? The returns through the preseason thus far have been surprisingly positive. Yes, it’s the preseason, but we have to start somewhere. If that holds into the regular season, Klint Kubiak’s system of a hard-nosed running game paired with devastating play action could be as welcome as rain in the Pacific Northwest, which would bode well for both of the punishing Seattle RBs.

Yes, I did say “both.” Kenneth Walker has never lacked talent and skill. He’s also had a lot of problems staying on the field throughout his tenure in Seattle. Seattle drafted Zach Charbonnet in the second round of the NFL Draft, one year after drafting Walker. In ’24, Charbonnet ran wild when Walker sat out due to nagging injuries. The way HC Mike Macdonald and company have talked so far this preseason, we should expect both to see time regularly.

If There is a League Winner in Seattle, It’s…

Zach Charbonnet

I want to be crystal clear here – It’s an exceedingly tall order for a league-winner to come out of Seattle. And (because stuff can be two things) if there’s a league-winner in Seattle, it’s Zach Charbonnet.

Kenneth Walker missed four games in ’24, and in those four games, Charbonnet finished as the RB6, RB11, RB1, and RB15.

Seattle has not come right out and said there’s an RB competition. They also seem very content to operate with Charbonnet as their RB1 while Walker sits out throughout the preseason. While my rankings currently have Charbonnet significantly lower than Walker, I’m moving closer by the hour to flip-flopping their rankings. Make sure you stay ready so you don’t have to get ready.

Deep League Draft Target

I’m gonna go so deep here that my guy doesn’t even have an ADP. How’s that for deep? And I won’t even give you just one target, I’ll give you two because neither of them has an ADP. The Seahawks have used both RBs, George Holani and Damien Martinez, extensively this preseason. While Holani is ahead of Martiniez on the depth chart, if the season really does go sideways, all bets are off. And I believe it has a good chance to do exactly that. 

Martinez and Holani are both only worth monitoring, not drafting, because in this house, we stay ready so we don’t have to get ready!

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Lou Brunson is a Senior Analyst and THE social media brains for Optimus Fantasy. Find his dynasty stylings on right here and at draftbuddy.com.