When the Seattle Seahawks shuffled around their coaching staff this offseason, there was some hope that some negative trends would change immediately. We’re only two games into the 2024 season, so changes could still be coming and take some time, but the 12s are showing no signs of changing some recent norms yet.

One of those trends was the run defense. Seattle was terrible against the New England Patriots, especially in the second half. Another trend is the offense’s use of the tight end group. That’s where DK Metcalf comes in.

Metcalf believes in his teammates and believes Seattle has a chance to be special on offense. Some of what he’s leaning on hasn’t come to fruition so far. For example, Seattle didn’t run the ball well in Week 2 and doesn’t seem capable of doing so without a healthy Kenneth Walker III. Additionally, tight end Noah Fant has been invisible.

Fant is fast for his size and should be a good weapon, but he still doesn’t get targeted often. To be fair, he did have a drop in Week 2 that could have been a touchdown if he had held onto the ball. But he also hasn’t scored a touchdown in 22 games.

For the Seahawks to truly be an elite offense, they need to have a running game and Fant needs to be good. The wide receiver targets have been inconsistent over the last two games, but with three excellent receivers, that could continue to be the case. There are only so many receiver targets, after all.

Metcalf told the media during a post-practice press conference before the Seahawks’ Week 3 game against the Miami Dolphins, “…You still haven’t seen (Tyler Lockett), me (Jaxon Smith-Njigba) and you still haven’t seen Noah. You saw Ken in Week 1. Zach Charbonnet has yet to hit the ground running. So I think it’s just a ticking time bomb until all of our stars on offense really get going.”

That could all be the case, but there are a lot of ifs in that statement. Charbonnet hasn’t really hit his stride in the 12s, and Fant hasn’t been used much since being traded to Seattle ahead of the 2022 season. Walker needs to get and stay healthy, and he’ll likely miss Week 3.

Seattle certainly has the potential to do great things. However, all of that potential is meaningless until the group can truly be effective and productive long-term. Maybe that will happen sometime this year. Or maybe the Seahawks just have a lot of good pieces that never add up to a complete puzzle.

More news and analysis on the Seahawks: