Sometimes math can shed light on what seems utterly mysterious. I mean, not for me. For me, it usually just results in a headache. But for the people who understand it, math can the world a beautiful place.

Mathematically speaking, the Seattle Seahawks defense in 2025 is not beautiful. You see, through four weeks of the 2025 season, the Seahawks are carrying two seemingly contradictory team defense stats. They should not coexist on the same team, and yet they do. Thus… headaches.

There have only been four games this season, so there’s a decent chance that one or both of these numbers are skewed by the small sample size. One or both may change over the next few months. If they do, it will be fascinating to see if they ultimately lean one way or the other. The answer to that question may have a great deal to do with how successful Seattle will be in 2025.

The Seattle Seahawks’ defense is struggling in one worrisome area

Here are the two incompatible statistics:

Seattle’s defense currently is second best in the league, allowing just 4.5 yards-per-play. And…

Seattle’s defense has been credited with 32 missed tackles which is fourth worst in the league.

How can a team have such a stingy yards-per-play number when it misses a lot of tackles. Though not true in every single case, a missed tackle almost always leads to more yards-per-play. Does that mean that if Mike Macdonald and his staff can fix this fundamental problem, the Hawks’ defense will return to those glory years of the early teens when it was the best thing going?

Or does it suggest that Seattle has been lucky thus far to play against anemic offenses that could not exploit this weakness. If that is true, watch out when Seattle has to take on a quality offense.

All four of the teams Seattle has faced this season fall in the bottom half of the league in terms of scoring. Seattle’s defense may have contributed to that poor ranking. Or it may have benefitted from their opponents’ overall weaknesses.

In at least one case, Seattle caught a break. They played the Arizona Cardinals last week without James Conner, who year in and year out is one of the best runners in the league at generating missed tackles.

Week in and week out, they are lucky in another way. They do not have to play against Kenneth Walker III, another of the best runners in the league at forcing missed tackles.

But that luck could run out this Sunday when they go against Bucky Irving and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Though he is off to a very slow start this year, Irving proved very difficult to bring down in 2024. Mike Macdonald has to get this problem corrected or risk having Irving come alive on Sunday.

Missed tackles mean different things depending on who is doing the missing. Cornerbacks, often the smallest players on the field, miss more tackles on average than other defenders. That of course is problematic, but usually there is another player behind them to clean up the mistake. Usually that player is the safety.

One of the biggest concerns for the Seahawks defense right now is that a safety, Coby Bryant, has twice as many missed tackles as any other player on the team. His 28.6% missed tackle rate is alarming. Safeties are often the last line of defense and as such, are usually among the best tacklers on the team.

What makes this so confusing is that last season, Bryant was one of the very best tacklers on the team. He took over at free safety in part because Rayshawn Jenkins was not tackling especially well. Bryant was credited with just four missed tackles in 786 defensive snaps. In just 272 snaps this season, he has already been credited with six misses.

Other central defenders – linebackers and safeties – have struggled early in 2025. Drake Thomas, Boye Mafe, and D’Anthony Bell all have missed tackle rates higher than 20%. They are not in on as many snaps or as many tackles as Bryant, so the raw totals are not as high, but the trend is alarming.

History suggests this is an anomaly which will work itself out. In Pete Carroll’s final season as coach, Seattle’s once-vaunted defense had fallen off drastically. In terms of missed tackles, they piled up 129, third-worst in the entire league.

Meanwhile, in Baltimore, Mike Macdonald’s defense had just 92 misses, in the league’s upper half. Macdonald brought that success to Seattle last year, reducing the 129 number of 2023 down to 94 in 2024.

Right now, Seattle is on pace for a debilitating 136 missed tackles for 2025. After Bucky Irving this week, they’ll have a couple matchups with Kyren Williams and the Los Angeles Rams in games that could have major impact on the postseason. Williams is another master of the missed tackle. Coby Bryant and the rest of the defense had better be ready.