The Seahawks have some work to do in order to catch up with the elite teams around the NFL. While they managed to upset the Lions in Detroit, every other meeting with a real contender last season ended in disaster and embarrassment for Seattle. The best teams they faced were the 49ers and the Ravens, who beat them by a total of 96-32 in three games.
The first order of business is reshaping the roster to reflect a more modern approach to building a championship contender. Mike Clay’s annual ESPN unit rankings illustrates the problem for Seattle pretty well. He has the Seahawks with the strongest wide receiver room in the league, plus good scores for running back, defensive line and cornerback.
However, the greatest weakness of this roster continues to be a deal-breaker. According to Clay, the Seahawks currently have the worst offensive line unit in the NFL. Here’s the full chart.
An initial run of 2024 NFL Unit Grades: pic.twitter.com/SmO3HqYx1v
— Mike Clay (@MikeClayNFL) March 18, 2024
Right now fans are fixated on the guard position, where there are at the moment no proven starters on the roster at all. However, they’re not much better at tackle, despite picking up what seemed like two solid long-term starters in the 2022 draft class. Charles Cross did not take that critical step forward in his second season in the league and in fact got worse. Meanwhile, Abe Lucas’ long-term knee issue kept him on he sidelines for most of the season.
At center, the Seahawks may choose to start Olu Oluwatimi, who was the best center in the nation in 2022 but only started one game and played 129 offensive snaps as a rookie.
To be fair, the team is obviously not done building up this unit for the 2024 season. Let’s revisit this after the draft and see how much more they have invested in this unit.
