The Seattle Seahawks’ offense has reached a crisis point at the midseason mark, as it struggled mightily to move the football once again in a 34-17 loss to the Chicago Bears on Monday night.

Seattle’s defense gave up a season-high 34 points, also its most since the 2024 season, but that was more a product of offensive ineptitude that led to massively disproportionate time of possession than it was an indictment of the Seahawks’ offense.

Chicago held the ball for 35 minutes, and the Seahawks had just two double-digit-play drives. One of those was Seattle’s final possession of the game — already trailing by 17 — when they needed to be attempting to score quickly.

“If we’re not efficient on early downs, or we’re not moving the ball forward all the time, it’s tough sledding,” Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald said postgame about the offense. “And when you play a team like that that is really proficient on third down, then that’s the type of stuff that happens. But the sense of urgency for us to improve right now is high.”

Microscope is on Brian Fleury, Seahawks offense to produce now

The blame can’t go to any one place. Offensive coordinator Brian Fleury appears out of his depth, quarterback Sam Darnold was as bad as he has been much of the season, and the offensive line looked drastically worse post-Quenton Nelson trade with Charles Cross out and Grey Zabel moving to right guard. 

Seattle’s offense has faced a litany of other issues throughout the season, but this was a catastrophic collapse in primetime eight games into the season that put them 3.5 games behind the San Francisco 49ers for the NFC West lead.

Following a three-play touchdown drive that was gifted to the offense by a defensive takeaway, the Seahawks trailed by just three. Then Chicago pushed it back to 10, and Seattle had nine minutes left in the fourth quarter to make up that difference.

That’s when Fleury, if he wasn’t already, began to fail. After a free first down off a penalty, the Seahawks had 1st and 10 at their own 22-yard line with 7:13 remaining. Fleury called two straight run plays that netted three yards, and Darnold threw an interception on third down.

Four plays later, it was a 17-point game, and the Seahawks were deflated.

“We didn’t do the things on offense that we need to be able to do to play Seahawk football,” Macdonald said. “To me, it’s inputs. If we’re playing the way that we’re supposed to, and we’re running off the rock, and we’re targeted right, and we’re dialed in on what we should be doing, we’re way more efficient and then the ball is distributed more evenly. So, that’s where we need to put our focus.”

If this were a one-time thing, it might be easier to swallow. But it feeds into a broader trend of how the pacing of the offense has continued to fail to adjust to the present in-game situation through eight games, and that falls on the offensive coaches — and ultimately the coordinator at the top — not putting their unit in positions to win games.

Do Darnold and the offensive weapons need to stop turning the ball over? Absolutely. Does the offensive line need more grit in the run game? Of course. And Fleury needs to start taking what’s working (i.e., the Chiefs game) and lean into it.

“As the season goes on, there’s always room to grow and continue to learn each other,” Darnold said of Fleury after the game. “I feel like the last couple of weeks we’ve been continuing to develop that relationship, and I feel like it’s been going good. Again, for whatever reason, today, we’ve got to watch the tape, but it just wasn’t getting enough, and we’ll continue to dive deep into it and be very honest with each other really throughout the next day.”

The messaging from Macdonald, Darnold and the rest of the team is similar to what was being said after the Week 6 loss to the Broncos, a defeat that punctuated a 1-3 stretch. There was hope after a dominant win against the Chiefs, but it now feels like they're back searching for answers.

Even with many critical pieces rolling over from 2025, this Seahawks offense is failing, and the team knows it. With no bye until Week 11, they have to get better tomorrow, or it could doom their chances of a second straight Super Bowl run.