Brady HendersonOct 20, 2025, 06:00 AM ETCloseBrady Henderson is a reporter for NFL Nation and covers the Seattle Seahawks for ESPN. He joined ESPN in 2017 after covering the team for Seattle Sports 710-AM.Follow on X
play1:21Clay: Seahawks RB situation has been a ‘fantasy disaster’Mike Clay breaks down the confusing Seahawks backfield with Kenneth Walker III and Zach Charbonnet.
Remembering Marshawn Lynch’s ‘Beast Quake’ (0:47)Adam Ray, Mina Kimes, Matt Hasselbeck and Chris Berman reenact the play-by-play call of Marshawn Lynch’s epic touchdown in the 2010-11 NFC Wild Card game. (0:47)
Clay: Seahawks RB situation has been a ‘fantasy disaster’Mike Clay breaks down the confusing Seahawks backfield with Kenneth Walker III and Zach Charbonnet.
SEATTLE — The auditorium at Seattle Seahawks headquarters underwent a mini makeover this past offseason. Each wall on either side of the seats is now covered in a blown-up photo of the stands at Lumen Field, giving players the feel during team meetings that they’re in the middle of the stadium.
But Sherman’s message on this mid-August day was that the players had to get the fans going, not the other way around.
“They’re not just going to come here and be cheering their butts off. You’ve got to earn it,” general manager John Schneider said on his Seattle Sports 710-AM radio show, relaying Sherman’s words before the Seahawks’ season opener against the visiting San Francisco 49ers on Sept. 7.
As Schneider was talking, he noticed a horde of 49ers fans filing into the stands an hour before kickoff.
“We’re hoping — as we look over here and see these San Fran red jerseys, we’ve got to keep them out of here,” Schneider lamented. “We’re tired of it.”
Those 49ers fans — roughly 7,000 were in attendance, by the Seahawks’ estimate — left the stadium celebrating their team’s 17-13 win.
The next day, then-coach Mike Holmgren dedicated a game ball to Seahawks fans, whose deafening noise had made it difficult for the visiting team to hear its own snap count.
In the NFC Championship Game later that season, the din overwhelmed quarterback Jake Delhomme and the Carolina Panthers as Seattle advanced to Super Bowl XL with a 34-14 win.
“We could not call a play in the huddle,” Delhomme said years later. “It was the most insane place I’ve ever been in my life.”
The venue set a since-broken record for loudest outdoor sports stadium when Seahawks fans reached 137.6 decibels in a December 2013 win against the Saints. Kansas City Chiefs fans at Arrowhead Stadium reclaimed the record the following year.
Clay: Seahawks RB situation has been a ‘fantasy disaster’
Mike Clay breaks down the confusing Seahawks backfield with Kenneth Walker III and Zach Charbonnet.
Meanwhile, with its victory in Jacksonville on Sunday, Macdonald became only the fourth coach in NFL history to win 10 of his first 11 road games, joining George Seifert, Sean McVay and Paul Brown, according to ESPN Research.
Lumen Field still gets ear-splittingly loud, though less so when opposing teams’ fans show up in droves like in Week 1 against San Francisco. Opponents have averaged roughly 1.5 false starts per game in Seattle since 2021 (third most in the NFL), just a hair under the average from 2003 to 2019 (also third).
But there has often been a direct correlation between the noise level and how well the Seahawks’ defense is playing. As that group’s performance has fluctuated since the Legion of Boom days, so have the decibels.
“You know when you were coming here that they were bringing it,” said veteran receiver Cooper Kupp, who signed with the Seahawks in March after eight seasons with the division-rival Los Angeles Rams.
Early in Minnesota’s decisive drive, with the stadium in full throat, then-Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold had to cover the earholes on his helmet while looking toward his sideline.
After a scramble run took him in that direction, he went to coach Kevin O’Connell to get the next playcall straight from the head coach, lest he have to strain to make it out in his headset amid the chaos.
“I was under center, and my O-line had a hard time hearing me, even under center,” Darnold recalled of how difficult it was to function as an offense on that drive. “For some reason, that place just echoes. That’s a huge shoutout to our fans. The 12s do a great job of being able to make that place shake, and it’s a really, really tough place to come and play.”
But what happened at the end of that drive might also illustrate how the noise — as much as Macdonald and his defense love it — can occasionally work against them.
Whatever happened with that communication breakdown led to Woolen allowing Vikings receiver Justin Jefferson to run by him, expecting help over the top that wasn’t actually supposed to be there.
Macdonald runs a complex defensive scheme that requires extensive verbal communication before every play, with players at all three levels trying to make adjustments and ensure they’re on the same page up until the snap.
The defenses the Seahawks ran under Carroll were much simpler by comparison. As such, their pre-snap communication could mostly be limited to hand signals, theoretically allowing them to handle the noise better than Seattle’s current defense does.
“We’ve got great fans, and we love when it’s loud, but we’ve got to be able to adjust to that on our side,” said Reed, a holdover from the Carroll era. “We know that during the week, before the crowd gets loud, we’ve got to make sure we overcommunicate then so we can already be a step ahead while we’re talking to each other. … If we can’t hear, we have to get closer to relay the message.”
“GO PACK GO” chants were audible from the press box and the television broadcast when the Seahawks hosted the Green Bay Packers for a Sunday night game in Week 15 last December. Players heard them on the field, too.
A similar scene played out two months earlier when the Seahawks hosted the Buffalo Bills, who had enough of their fans at Lumen Field that then-Seattle quarterback Geno Smith said it seemed at times like Seattle was playing on the road.
Nevertheless, the Seahawks have attempted to curb the trend in their own building, which they believe has become a destination for opposing fans for its reputation as one of the NFL’s most raucous venues.
Over the offseason, they sent a letter to season-ticket holders warning “renewal eligibility may be impacted if it is determined that your tickets were primarily used for resale purposes.” Other teams, such as the Packers, Indianapolis Colts and Buccaneers, have also tried to crack down on the practice in recent years.
Macdonald has emphasized the need for the team to do its part to make sure Lumen Field is packed with its own fans, saying the Seahawks have to do a better job of delivering a product that they want to root hard for.
“We’ve got to win, period,” he said. “Opposing fans don’t want to show up if we’re consistently kicking butt and doing what we’re supposed to do.”
Remembering Marshawn Lynch’s ‘Beast Quake’ (0:47)Adam Ray, Mina Kimes, Matt Hasselbeck and Chris Berman reenact the play-by-play call of Marshawn Lynch’s epic touchdown in the 2010-11 NFC Wild Card game. (0:47)
Adam Ray, Mina Kimes, Matt Hasselbeck and Chris Berman reenact the play-by-play call of Marshawn Lynch’s epic touchdown in the 2010-11 NFC Wild Card game. (0:47)
CloseBrady Henderson is a reporter for NFL Nation and covers the Seattle Seahawks for ESPN. He joined ESPN in 2017 after covering the team for Seattle Sports 710-AM.Follow on X
The only aspect of the situation that is clear is how intent the organization is to fix it.
“We’ve got to get Lumen rocking again,” Schneider said in February.
Darnold hit Jefferson for the winning touchdown, another loss at Lumen.
The Seahawks are also trying to reward season-ticket holders who attend every game, now giving them priority for seat upgrades. But the Seahawks acknowledge the simple economics that are at play for those who do sell, with tickets for the most desirable games sometimes fetching a high enough price on the secondary market to cover most or all of a seasonlong balance — and how opposing teams’ fans are often willing to splurge for a novel experience.
But recent history has shown that’s easier said than done.