Seattle Seahawks: 3 Toughest games of 2019 season

The Seattle Seahawks are looking to win the NFC West in 2019, but they’ll have to beat some tough teams to do it.

This coming season, the Seattle Seahawks will face off against playoff teams from last season in five games. Playing five of those games doesn’t necessarily make the Seahawks schedule difficult. What makes the road back to the playoffs in 2019 tough is the fact that Seattle will face plenty of teams that just missed the playoffs last year.

In 2019, Seattle will face three teams that are coming off of seven-win seasons. Those teams — the Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers and Cleveland Browns — all added free agents this summer or have key players returning from injury. Cleveland, in particular, looks like they could have a breakout season.

The Seahawks will also have to face the Minnesota Vikings, who went 8-7-1 last year. It was certainly a disappointing year for Minnesota, but the team will still be eyeing the playoffs this year.

The Seahawks will actually be facing two playoff teams that did not make this list. In Week 7, the Baltimore Ravens will come to Seattle in a matchup of 10-6 teams from 2018. The Seahawks will also have to face the Philadelphia Eagles, who went 9-7 and got the second Wild Card spot last season, in Week 12. I’m leaving both of those games out of this conversation, though.

The Ravens focus heavily on the run game and then rely on their defense to lock down opponents. The Seahawks had the best rushing attack in the league last season. The team also has players who excel against the run, like All-Pro middle linebacker Bobby Wagner.

While Week 7 will be a terrific grudge match between newly signed Ravens safety Earl Thomas and his old team, I don’t think it will be as difficult of a game as the three matchups that appear later in this article.

The Eagles have a lot of question marks. Carson Wentz has struggled to stay healthy down the stretch for two straight seasons now. They also had the 28th overall rushing attack last season. Adding Jordan Howard might help in that area, but Howard really struggled with the Chicago Bears last season. Defensively, the Eagles have a really good line and a deep secondary, but I don’t see that giving Russell Wilson too much of a hard time.

Now that those exclusions are out of the way, let’s get into the three specific matchups from the upcoming season that I believe will give Seattle a lot of trouble.