I guess if you’re going to take one positive from the Seattle Seahawks’ very ugly 6-3 win over the Chicago Bears (besides the actual win), it’s the fact that the game ended in well under three hours and it barely There were penalties for both teams. The game was characterized by casual boredom from start to finish. If you’re going to get bored, at least do it quickly.

It’s time for the penultimate winners and losers of the 2024 regular season.

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winner

Leonard Williams

Big Cat added another three tackles for loss and two sacks to his tally, giving him nine sacks on the year. Am I hearing a 10-sack season for Leonard Williams? He was the best defensive player all year, and this year in review was simply an exercise for the veteran defensive lineman. Seattle’s defense was good overall. Williams was Great.

Devon Witherspoon

It wasn’t like his Monday Night Football masterclass against the New York Giants, but Spoon dominated. Three tackles for loss and a “sack” by Caleb Williams, which really just consisted of Williams running out of bounds for no gain while Spoon chased out of the corner. Spoon is extremely fun to watch and I’m glad he has at least one sack on his stat sheet because he deserves something big from his season.

Uchenna Nwosu

This was his best game since returning from his last injury. Nwosu had a pass deflected and his first sack of the season and created a few more pressures that night. It’s encouraging to see that Nwosu can salvage something from a frustrating season that was mostly on hold.

Coby Bryant

Another case of Bryant applying late pressure on a quarterback blitz to force an errant throw. He did it against Aaron Rodgers in the New York Jets game and he did it on the game-winning play against the Bears. Bryant has been a revelation as a full-time starter and could be someone to consider a contract extension until next season happens.

Riq Woolen

After all the criticism leveled against him for his performance against the Green Bay Packers and the subsequent “team violation” on the bench at the start of the Minnesota Vikings game, Riq desperately needed that pick at the end of the game. He needed it a little more after getting hit on DJ Moore’s drag route on 4th and 6 before the two-minute warning. Woolen snapped Caleb Williams’ NFL record streak of consecutive passes without an interception and was otherwise very good in coverage in this matchup.

Kenny McIntosh

It was a rough ride for Zach Charbonnet after a fast start that finished with just 57 yards on 15 carries, but Kenny McIntosh is making the most of his increased playing time. He had a career-long 25-yard rush to set up the Seahawks’ first field goal and finished the game with 46 yards on 7 carries. I haven’t really used McIntosh this season, but it’s nice to see him becoming more involved and effective.

Charbonnet was excellent in pass defense and deserves praise, but the stats after halftime were nothing to write home about.

Jake Curhan

Once a Seahawk, always a Seahawk. Thank Uchenna Nwosu for catching a touchdown.

Mike MacDonald

Does the first-year head coach set a winning record? This is a nice personal moment for him, even if it doesn’t lead to the playoffs. His defense was also awesome and gave Caleb Williams a run for his money.

Noah Fant

The Seahawks had just two touchdowns and three of Fant’s four catches for 42 yards came in the series. Perhaps his most important contribution was getting Seattle out of a 2nd-and-16 jam after the two-minute warning (thanks to DK Metcalf’s personal foul penalty). Fant is playing his best football late in the season, although he continues to wait for his first touchdown since 2022.

Olu Oluwatimi

Oluwatimi recovered Smith’s fumble on Darrell Taylor’s strip sack, otherwise the Bears would have been immediately within field goal range. Incredibly, Smith hasn’t lost a single fumble this year and he can thank Olu Olu for keeping it that way.

Jason Myers

Myers accounted for 100% of the Seahawks’ points and easily hit a 50-yard field goal in difficult conditions. His eighth 50-yard rush of the season extends his franchise record and sets a new career high.

loser

Everyone who watched this game

Weren’t you entertained? Oh, wasn’t that you? Now, I know some of you like to see great defense, so I can’t blow you away if you liked Seattle’s defensive performance, but there was a whole lot of bad offense in this game. This was the Seahawks-Browns game of this generation in 2011, which also ended 6-3 but went against Seattle.

This was no fun for neutrals. At least bad football can be fun with terrible interceptions, crazy turnovers, missed field goals and other low points. This game was a series of incomplete passes, off-base throws, and plenty of punts.

Ryan Grubb

Well, Grubb gave us a good quarter and a good chance to run the ball effectively and variedly in attack. That’s about it. The Bears had allowed 102 points in the previous three weeks, and the Seahawks turned up the heat and Chicago gave up the fewest points allowed all season.

Grubb ran the ball more and still had a low play-action rate. When he threw the ball, it was all at the line of scrimmage, which I kind of understand given the weather and Geno Smith’s poor health, but a screen for Pharaoh Brown?! Last week it was a fake throw to DK Metcalf behind the line of scrimmage, and this week he pulls off something worse for a guy who has had multiple drops this season and is known not to be a threat on offense.

Whatever you think about Geno Smith, his results with Shane Waldron were far superior to what we see with Grubb. He is neither the first nor the last offensive coordinator to be limited by his offensive line. Grubb’s results are the worst we’ve seen from a Seahawks OC first-year player since Jeremy Bates, who got the boot in 2010.

Pharaoh Brown

I don’t really have the energy to write about it right now, but the free agent additions of John Schneider this offseason have been an unmitigated disaster, and Brown is one of those players. Pharaoh Brown was here to block as a tight end, and he doesn’t always block well. For some reason he gets the ball on the screen on a pass and fumbles the ball, which luckily wasn’t a touchdown after Kyler Gordon was knocked down by contact. In his defense, he should never be able to achieve these goals in the first place.

Brown will not be with the Seahawks in 2025.

Jaelon Darden

Don’t hit back on your own 5 unless you have enough space. Part of this is due to the poor blocking the Seahawks continue to have on special teams, but the punt return and kick return decisions, regardless of who is on the field, have been a key part of the game all season the Seahawks’ terrible field position problems.

Final remarks

• Geno Smith hasn’t been very good and he’s not healthy. He should have been picked in the red zone (again), and the thought process that led him to predetermine a tight window throw to Tyler Lockett was mind-boggling. Smith’s hesitation in scrambling was also evident, and given the knee injury he can’t be blamed, but the near-interception seemed to affect his decision to be as cautious as possible for the rest of the night. He has also had to overcome some of his misfires in recent weeks. Officially he had one turnover-free game, but he was lucky it wasn’t two. I still think the problems with his season have a lot more to do with the circumstances around him than with him specifically, but this was a worrying performance even without the turnovers.

• DK Metcalf hasn’t had a penalty since Week 4 against the Detroit Lions, so I’m not particularly mad about this silly fight with Tyrique Stevenson, but it’s no bad way to hurt the team. Show some restraint for once. The only reason Metcalf didn’t end up on the loser’s list is because he made an incredible hands catch on an inferior Geno Smith play-action pass, one he has rarely made in his career. That’s positive for me!
• Jaxon Smith-Njigba had just three catches for 32 yards and ended his long game streak with at least 70 receiving yards. He needs five more catches to surpass Tyler Lockett’s franchise record of 100 catches in a season.
• I was skeptical about re-signing Jarran Reed at the start of the season, but he got credit for his efforts and has played very well in recent weeks. He was one of six Seahawks to release Caleb Williams.
• The Bears have a shady coaching staff and apparently no one on this team knows how or when to take a timeout. It’s not just a Matt Eberflus problem.
• I said in the game thread comments that I don’t find the Seahawks exciting, and I stand by that. There are exciting individual players, but the team itself isn’t a great sight, and hasn’t been for years. I’m not sure how much that can be attributed to the coaching staff compared to the squad quality at this point. An offense that lacks explosive plays, whether in the running or passing game, a defense that doesn’t consistently generate a lot of turnovers or negative plays, and a team that is generally prone to a lot of penalties are not must-see TV. It’s also the way the Seahawks make games close against weak opponents while often being eliminated against Super Bowl contenders. Unless that changes, the Seahawks’ cap will not increase.
• And yet the split is still within reach. I’m rooting for the Week 18 winner-take-all. Go, Cardinals! Let’s see LJ Collier sack Matthew Stafford. Let’s let Evan Brown become Steve Hutchinson and block Kobie Turner from SoFi Stadium. DeeJay Dallas? It’s time to squeeze in one of those kickoff returns.