Seahawks Clips
The Seahawks may have some help at running back this weekend as they take on the Rams for the right to represent the NFC in Super Bowl LX.
Seattle has opened the 21-day practice window for George Holani to return from injured reserve.
Holani has been out with a hamstring injury since Seattle’s Week 12 victory over Tennessee.
In his second season, Holani took 22 carries for 73 yards with a touchdown. He also caught a pair of passes for 15 yards and returned 16 kicks, averaging 24.2 yards per attempt.
Holani’s potential return takes on more importance after fellow Seattle running back Zach Charbonnet suffered a torn ACL during the divisional round victory over the 49ers.
Seattle’s first injury report of the week is due out later on Wednesday.
We’ll have to wait until Sunday to find out which two teams are playing in Super Bowl LX, but we learned the identity of the game’s referee on Tuesday.
The NFL announced that Shawn Smith will head up the officiating crew for the game. It will be Smith’s first time refereeing the Super Bowl.
Smith entered the NFL’s officiating ranks as an umpire in 2015 and became a referee in 2018. He worked the Patriots’ win over the Texans in the divisional round of the playoffs last weekend.
Umpire Roy Ellison, down judge Dana McKenzie, line judge Julian Mapp, field judge Jason Ledet, side judge Eugene Hall, back judge Greg Steed, and replay official Andrew Lambert make up the rest of the crew. Ellison and Hall have worked three previous Super Bowls, Steed has worked two others and this will be McKenzie’s second Super Bowl assignment.
The Seahawks had one of the top offenses in the league in the regular season and a double-barreled backfield played a big role in their success.
Kenneth Walker and Zach Charbonnet ran for 1,757 yards and 16 touchdowns, which provided the 14-3 team with a strong complement to Sam Darnold’s 4,048 passing yards. That formula is going to have to be tweaked a bit against the Rams this week.
Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald announced that Charbonnet is out for the rest of the playoff run with a knee injury and that will put a heavier burden on Walker as the team tries to advance to the Super Bowl. On Monday, MacDonald said that the work Walker did to prepare for this season leaves him confident that he can do whatever’s asked of him the rest of the way.
“I know he was working through his foot at the beginning over the course of the offseason and that was frustrating for him because of the amount of work that he was putting in,” Macdonald said, via the team’s website. “And I think hopefully he realizes the dividends that that’s paid, that work that he’s put in to really get himself in a good spot up to this point, because what I’ve seen, I’ve seen a guy that’s, he’s gotten better throughout the season, so you can’t say that about all runners. And so that’s a tribute to him and how he’s taken care of his body.”
Walker’s 117 yards and three touchdowns against the 49ers provides support for Macdonald’s view and he’ll get a chance to star again this Sunday.
The Seahawks’ divisional round playoff win over the 49ers began with Rashid Shaheed returning the opening kickoff for a touchdown, in the latest reminder of what a big move the Seahawks made at the trade deadline.
The Seahawks acquired Shaheed on November 4, the day of the trade deadline, by sending fourth- and fifth-round draft picks to the Saints. His impact has been enormous.
The win over the 49ers was the third time Shaheed has returned a kick for a touchdown in his 10 games with the Seahawks, and the Seahawks won all three games. He was previously named the NFC’s Special Teams Player of the Week after a kickoff return touchdown in the Seahawks’ win over the Falcons, but by far his biggest contribution was in the Seahawks’ win over the Rams.
In that game, the Seahawks were losing 30-14 in the fourth quarter, until Shaheed went to work. Shaheed had a 58-yard punt return touchdown in the fourth quarter, and then on the first play of the Seahawks’ next drive, Shaheed ran the ball 31 yards, setting up a Seahawks touchdown on the next play. In the blink of an eye, the Seahawks had gone from a 30-14 deficit to a 30-30 tie, and Shaheed was the main reason for that. The Seahawks went on to win the game in overtime.
Without Shaheed, the Seahawks wouldn’t have home-field advantage over the Rams in Sunday’s NFC Championship Game. They wouldn’t have beaten the Rams without Shaheed, and without that win over the Rams, the Seahawks would have been a wild card team instead of the No. 1 seed in the NFC. (If the Rams had won that game, the two teams would have finished with the same record, and the Rams would have won the tiebreaker.) Because of that trade, the Seahawks will be playing at home with a chance to go to the Super Bowl on Sunday.
Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said that as a defensive coach, he had always been well aware of Shaheed as a tough player to stop, but getting him on the team at the trade deadline turned out to be even better for Seattle than the Seahawks could have hoped.
“He was someone that we were targeting throughout the process,” Macdonald said. “From my perspective, the coaches’ perspective, he’s a player we really respect. When he’s catching the ball on kick return you’re like, ‘Here we go, we’ve got to contain this guy.’ When he’s on the field on offense, you can’t let him get behind you, and the receiver run game is something you have to account for as well. It really does help the team big-time, so that was awesome.”
Macdonald said targeting Shaheed in a trade was part of the Seahawks’ overall approach of never missing an opportunity to get better.
“We’re relentless,” Macdonald said. “That’s our philosophy, we’re just constantly chasing, what are the things we can do to make our team better, all the time.”
The Seahawks are showing how much a team can improve if it’s willing to take a big swing at the trade deadline. Other teams should take note.
Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford turns 38 next month. He’s far closer to the end than the beginning of a career that started in 2009. On this week’s Let’s Go! podcast, Stafford was asked whether he considers whether it’s his last chance to win another Super Bowl.
“I try not to think about that kind of stuff,” Stafford told Jim Gray. “I just try to enjoy the team that I’m on and the moment that I’m in. I love coming to work. I love the group that we get to do it with. These, like I said, opportunities don’t come every single year, so I just try to live in them and cherish them when they’re here. I sure hope it’s not my last opportunity, but we’ll see. You never know. Take these games and these seasons one at a time and figure it out from there. But I just know that I’m happy in the moment that I am right now doing what I’m doing.”
There’s no reason to think Stafford can’t keep going, for several years to come. He had a stellar season, being named first-team All-Pro for the first time in his career. And he could end up winning his first NFL MVP award.
The bigger goal is to win a Super Bowl. Stafford and the Rams are two games away from it.
Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald said after Saturday’s win over the 49ers that there was optimism running back Zach Charbonnet avoided a serious knee injury, but that hope went away after further testing.
Macdonald said on Seattle Sports on Monday that Charbonnet will not be able to play in the NFC Championship Game and that he will miss the Super Bowl as well if the Seahawks are able to beat the Rams.
“The bummer is Charbs,” Macdonald said. “He’s got a significant knee injury unfortunately. Breaks your heart. He’s going to need surgery. He’s going to have a long road back.”
Macdonald did not specify the exact injury, but multiple reports say Charbonnet tore his ACL. If that’s the case, his recovery time will likely stretch into the 2026 season.
Charbonnet had five carries for 20 yards against the Niners. He had 184 carries for 730 yards and 12 touchdowns in the regular season.
Kenneth Walker will be the lead back for Seattle the rest of the way. Velus Jones was the other back on the roster Saturday and veteran Cam Akers is also on the practice squad.
It was one of the best games of the 2025 regular season. And we’ll get a rubber match in the playoffs.
The Rams and Seahawks will meet in Seattle next weekend, for a berth in Super Bowl LX. Seattle has opened as a 1.5-point favorite.
In Week 11, for their first game of the year, the Rams won 21-19 in L.A. Seattle overcame four interceptions by quarterback Sam Darnold, setting up a 61-yard field goal attempt for the win. It was no good.
In the Week 16 rematch, the Seahawks won with the first ever two-point conversion in overtime, following a crazy two-point conversion awarded via replay review, with the determination that an incompletion had been a backward pass, recovered in the end zone by Seattle.
The Rams racked up 581 yards of offense in last month’s classic. They had a 16-point lead in the fourth quarter, before the Seahawks came back.
Seattle’s win helped them earn the No. 1 seed, setting the location for round three.
However it goes, it should be a great one. And the winner will travel to the home field of their mutual rivals, the 49ers, for a shot at an NFL title, against the victor of the Patriots-Broncos AFC Championship.
UPDATE 10:30 p.m. ET: It has already moved to Seattle minus-2.5.
The 49ers had a good offense this season. But the Seahawks had a better defense.
After Seattle ended San Francisco’s season with a dominant win in the divisional round of the playoffs, the numbers are in: The 49ers scored a total of 26 points in three games against the Seahawks, or 8.7 points per game. In their other 16 games, the 49ers scored a total of 440 points, or 27.5 points per game.
49ers quarterback Brock Purdy threw two touchdown passes and four interceptions against the Seahawks; he threw 18 touchdown passes and six interceptions against all other teams.
San Francisco head coach Kyle Shanahan will surely spend a lot of time this offseason studying Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald’s defense, and trying to figure out why the 49ers’ usually strong attack was shut down by their division rivals.
The Seahawks jumped out to an early lead over the 49ers on Rashid Shaheed’s 95-yard kickoff return for a touchdown on the first play of the game and they just kept rolling from there.
Seattle’s defense stifled everything the 49ers tried to do and they ran 33 times for 175 yards to grind down the 49ers defense. Running back Ken Walker had 116 of those yards and he scored three touchdowns in the 41-6 win.
After the game was over, Walker said that it was clear on the field that the Seahawks run game was taking its toll on the Niners.
“You can see it when they’re breathing, they’re tired. They’re slow to get up. You can see it being demoralizing to them,” Walker said, via the team’s website.
The early lead and the effectiveness of the run game meant that the Seahawks only had to put the ball in the air 17 times. If they can follow the same script next week, a trip to the Super Bowl will be their prize.
Seahawks running back Zach Charbonnet exited Saturday’s game early with a knee injury, but there’s reason for optimism in Seattle.
Head coach Mike Macdonald said after the Seahawks beat the 49ers that he is optimistic that Charbonnet’s knee is not structurally damaged. Macdonald said additional medical testing needs to be done before the Seahawks know for sure whether the injury is serious.
Charbonnet had five carries for 20 yards when he exited the game. In his absence, Kenneth Walker went off for 19 carries, 116 yards and three touchdowns.
Although Walker is the Seahawks’ starting running back and more of a big-play threat, Charbonnet was more consistent in short yardage and ran for more first downs and more touchdowns than Walker in the regular season. The Seahawks hope to have both running backs available for the NFC Championship Game.
