The Seahawks could be a Super Bowl contender — if they learn to win at home
- - The Seahawks could be a Super Bowl contender — if they learn to win at home
Andrew GreifOctober 1, 2025 at 8:01 PM
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The Seattle Seahawks are 2-0 on the road this season. (Rick Scuteri / AP)
A month into the NFL season, one clear-cut takeaway is that there seems to be no clear-cut favorite in the NFC.
Philadelphia (4-0), the reigning Super Bowl champion, is the conference's only undefeated team. Behind the Eagles are five 3-1 teams and others (Green Bay, at 2-1-1, and Dallas, at 1-2-1) that don't appear far off.
One team in that chase pack, the Seattle Seahawks (3-1), has a defense that has allowed the league’s second-fewest points, thanks in part to its having intercepted the second-most passes. Advanced statistics suggest its quarterback, Sam Darnold, is among the season's best.
And since Mike Macdonald took over as coach in 2024, perhaps no team is better at winning in difficult situations. Seattle went 7-1 on the road last season, and it has started this season 2-0 away from home, an overall 9-1 road record that ties with Detroit for the NFL's best in that span.
Yet Seattle has an unusual flaw.
“On the road we’re kicking butt,” linebacker Ernest Jones IV said after a home win against New Orleans on Sept. 21. “But we gotta win games at home."
Under Macdonald, Seattle started 2-0 at Lumen Field in 2024. Ever since then, they are just 2-7, making them an outlier in a league in which, through Sunday of Week 4, home teams are 182-151-1 (a .546 winning percentage) since the start of the 2024 season.
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In January, Macdonald pledged improvement at home.
"The first thing that comes to mind is we've got to play better at home," he said at the end of last season. "It’s great to be 7-1 on the road, but we’ve got to make this place a nightmare for teams to come in and play us."
It hasn't quite been a nightmare.
Since last season, the Seahawks have been outscored by four points in 11 home games, and they are one of 10 teams with negative point differentials at home, according to Stathead. Compare that to Detroit, which has outscored its opponents by a league-high 176 points over the same span, and Buffalo, with its point differential of plus-156.
"We've got to win at home, point-blank, period," defensive lineman Jarran Reed said before the season opener against San Francisco at home — which the Seahawks lost. Two weeks later, they routed New Orleans to even their home record this season to 1-1.
A key litmus test arrives Sunday when the Seahawks host Tampa Bay (3-1), another potential NFC contender whose only loss this season is to Philadelphia.
The contrast between Seattle's fortunes at home and on the road are even more pronounced considering Lumen Field had long been among the toughest stadiums to visit. Under former coach Pete Carroll, the franchise won 68% of its home games from 2010 to 2023 — including 14 consecutive at one point — the fifth-best home winning percentage in that span, behind only Green Bay, New England, Baltimore and Pittsburgh, according to NBC Sports research. Games in Seattle became known for its cacophonous volume owing to fans known as the 12th Man, or "12s."
That dominance began to slide late in Carroll's tenure, however. And the regression came against the backdrop of a larger shift within a league in which it's now harder to win at home.
Home teams won 53% of their regular-season games from 2020 to 2024, the lowest winning percentage of any five-year period since 2000, according to an offseason by Pro Football Focus. Since 2010 to 2014, when home teams won 57.2% of the time, road opponents have steadily gained an edge.
In the playoffs, however, playing at home still has a much stronger correlation to winning, the study found — a challenge even for a team as good on the road as Seattle. It's why finishing with a high enough playoff seed to earn a home playoff game could be critical in a rugged conference.
Source: “AOL Sports”
