The Seattle Seahawks have an upcoming reunion when they face the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday. Former Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak is now the head coach of the Raiders, and that means the Seattle defense will face Kubiak’s offense once again.

After practicing against Kubiak’s scheme every day during the 2025 season, both sides have an advantage: Kubiak knows Mike Macdonald’s defense, and the Seahawks’ defense and Macdonald know Kubiak’s offense.

Those may ultimately cancel each other out, but it does add intrigue to the matchup. Seahawks linebacker Ernest Jones IV was asked on Thursday about how their knowledge of Kubiak’s system could impact the game.

Why Seahawks' defense has advantage over Raiders

“Yeah, I mean, I think that definitely helps,” Jones said. “We were able to get a feel of how he would like to attack us in practice during certain situational periods, and you got a great idea of how he likes to call the games just sitting there watching. I think that’ll help us, but at the end of the day he’s got his own squad; he’s tweaked a lot of things, so we’ve gotta go out there and execute.”

After a 3-0 start, the Raiders have lost five of their last six games. But much of that can be attributed to a horrendous defense that has allowed a league-high 29.8 points and 385.4 yards per game.

Offensively, Las Vegas has been in the middle of the pack under Kubiak. The Raiders are averaging 331 yards (15th) and 26.4 points (eighth) per game. They moved the ball through the air well with Kirk Cousins at quarterback, but their 71.3 rushing yards per game rank 31st in the league.

A lot will change in Week 10, however. Cousins was traded to Minnesota, and No. 1 overall pick Fernando Mendoza is taking over the starting quarterback role. He will make his first NFL start against the Seahawks.

“You kind of watch the preseason games; he played a little bit in those,” Jones explained about how they’re game-planning for Mendoza. “Then you go from what they’ve done, the totality of the season; you kind of go in there with expectations of them to kind of keep it the same, but knowing that he’s a young guy … I think they’ll kind of dial it back a little bit. But you’re playing a player [that was] the number one pick and can make all the throws, extremely intelligent guy from the looks of it, so I think we’ve got a challenge ahead of ourselves.”

On paper, the Seahawks’ defense has the big advantage of being the best against the run in the entire league against one of the worst rushing offenses.

But as Jones said, Mendoza leading the offense creates a big question mark about how good the Raiders’ passing offense will be, and that’s what Seattle will be looking to neutralize on Sunday.