Seattle's first loss cost the Seahawks the No. 1 spot in the Week 4 power rankings, and the timing fits the shape of the season. Nobody in the 2026 field has looked like a team built to hold that spot for long.
The strange part is how Seattle lost it. Sam Darnold threw for 379 yards and four touchdowns on 31-of-45 passing with two interceptions. Jaxon Smith-Njigba caught 10 passes for 128 yards and two scores, and completed his only pass attempt for 14 more. The run game gave none of that any support: Jadarian Price, Emanuel Wilson and George Holani combined for 17 carries and 39 yards, and Price lost a fumble. When an offense throws 45 times and hands off 17, the scoreboard tends to explain itself. Seattle's defense, which got nine tackles from Drake Thomas and eight from Ernest Jones IV, couldn't make a 379-yard, four-touchdown passing day stand up.
History is unkind to defending champions for exactly this reason. The last team to repeat as Super Bowl winner was the 2003-04 Patriots, and no champion since has managed it. Seattle returned most of its Super Bowl-winning roster and still wasn't the consensus pick as the league's best team heading into the season. A single loss doesn't confirm that skepticism, but it does give it a home.
The reshuffling at the top comes with company. Yahoo's Week 4 rundown has the Raiders and Vikings continuing to rise while the Texans and Chargers fall, which is what a season without a dominant team looks like: movement driven by whoever lost most recently rather than by anyone seizing the ranking.
My verdict: the new No. 1 is borrowing the spot, not owning it, and I'd take the under on that team still holding it at the end of October. Seattle stays in my top three. The passing game is good enough to win a title again. The 39 rushing yards are the thing that decides whether they do, and until that gets fixed, the Seahawks are a contender whose floor is lower than a champion's should be.
