Despite No Playoffs, Seahawks Prove Mettle as Road Warriors

The Seattle Seahawks traveled very well throughout the 2024 season with a 7-1 road record.

Jon Alfano | 14 Hours Ago

Jan 5, 2025; Inglewood, California, USA; Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith (7) leaves the field following the game against the Los Angeles Rams at SoFi Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images / Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

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Seattle Seahawks

The 2024 season didn't end the way the Seattle Seahawks wanted to, but there were still plenty of positives to build on.

Ten wins in Mike Macdonald's first season is nothing to scoff at. Macdonald, the youngest head coach in the league at 37 years old, had to deal with a ton of roster turnover both before and during the season, so a 10-win campaign is a very solid foundation.

Building off that point, Seattle was among the league's best road teams this season. The Seahawks finished the season 7-1 on the road, the second-best record in the league behind only the Detroit Lions (8-0), ironically the only team they lost to away from home.

That road record is a credit to not just Macdonald and his players, but the organization as a whole. It tied the franchise's best-ever record in away games.

"The first thing that happens is I think the way we travel and how it's set up," Macdonald told reporters Tuesday. "I thought our operations folks like Jeremy [Young, director of team travel] and John [Schneider, general manager], the way they set everything up, Andrea [Vanderwoude, director of performance nutrition] with the food. It's really seamless when we travel, guys can really just focus on football, so I think we do it at a first-class level. Just the focus and keeping the team together.

"The business trip, we don't really use that language. It's really just 'Hey, let's stay loose. Let's stay focused. Let's kind of keep the task at hand and go try to win a football game.' So, trying to keep it simple. But, yeah, just the mentality of the guys, operation-wise, offensively, operating on silent cadence defensively, it's a little more quiet, so it's easier to communicate."

On the other hand, the Seahawks finished with a paltry 3-6 record at home, their worst since they finished 2-6 at home and 4-12 overall in 2008. Lumen Field (or CenturyLink Field at the time) was once one of the scariest places to play in the NFL, so restoring that home-field advantage will be a top priority in Macdonald's second season.

"And then, honestly ... the first thing that comes to mind is we've got to play better at home. It's great to be 7-1 on the road, but we've got to make this place a nightmare for teams that come in and play us and utilize our fans and the crowd and the 12s and kind of the whole '12 is 1' mantra. We've really got to make that come to life when we're at Lumen (Field), so that's going to be a major focus for us this offseason."