The Seattle Seahawks are first place in the NFC West and have one of the NFL’s most dominant defenses once again, but there’s a distinctly different feel about the quality of the team in 2016. After four consecutive seasons finishing in the top 10 in scoring, only three teams have fewer points per game than the Seahawks after eight weeks.

For the first time in his career, Russell Wilson is on a streak of three straight games without a touchdown pass. A year after grinding out 15 regular season games with at least 100 rushing yards, the Seahawks have just two such games in seven showings in 2016.

“We need to get out of what we’ve been in the last two weeks,” coach Pete Carroll told reporters a day after Seattle struggled to generate offense against the New Orleans Saints. “This is not the way we’re going to play football and we’ll fix this.”

There’s no goat and there’s no weak link — the entire Seahawks offense is struggling and there isn’t a midseason fix in sight.

It’s not tremendously surprising that Seattle’s offensive production took a step back. One look at the team’s starting offensive line is enough to raise eyebrows, but the stark difference between the team’s lack of production in 2016 and it’s No. 4 unit from a year ago is striking.

But there’s a list of reasons why the Seahawks are struggling to score points and there’s plenty of blame to go around:

The offensive line is cheap patchwork

Make no mistake: regardless of other factors contributing to the team’s offensive failures, the extraordinarily inexperienced line is the reason for most concern. It’s not like injuries shredded the unit. Even at its healthiest, there were serious reasons for concern.

At the beginning of the season, the Seahawks’ starters from left to right were Bradley Sowell, Mark Glowinski, Justin Britt, J’Marcus Webb and Garry Gilliam. It was an extremely cheap starting five for a team that allowed players like Russell Okung, James Carpenter, J.R. Sweezy, Breno Giacomini and Max Unger to go elsewhere.

Via Mark Sandritter:

Seattle has spent just $8.6 million on its nine rostered offensive linemen, according to Spotrac, nearly $500,000 less than any other team.. That’s just $955,268 per offensive lineman, the lowest of any position group on the team. Even the Seattle specialist trio averages nearly double at $1.85 million per player. Seattle has spent the lowest portion of its salary cap on the offensive line at 5.83 percent.

Since then, rookie first-round pick Germain Ifedi has recovered from injury to take a spot in the starting lineup and the unit has most stayed healthy, but it hasn’t been good enough.

When Sowell went down with a knee problem, the Seahawks turned to George Fant to start at left tackle. The former college basketball player hadn’t started a football game since he played Pee Wee league as a kid — and he actually did pretty well considering the circumstances.

But the fact that such a raw and inexperienced player was asked to save the day is telling of the flawed roster built around Wilson.

Russell Wilson has suffered through a nightmare

Believe it or not, it can be a bad idea to have an $87 million franchise quarterback play behind a bargain-budget offensive line. Shocking, I know.

Wilson is a really good quarterback, and if you ever doubt that, you shouldn’t. He led the NFL in passer rating last season, throwing 34 touchdowns and just eight interceptions. And even during his rough 2016 that hasn’t featured much scoring, Wilson still has a passer rating of 91.5 with only two interceptions.

It’s impressive his season hasn’t been much worse considering he has played through what seems like an endless stream of injuries.

Week 1: Ndamukong Suh stepped on Wilson’s right ankle, twisting and seemingly causing a serious sprain. His mobility was cleared hindered, but Wilson didn’t leave the game.

Ndamukong Suh stepped on Wilson’s right ankle, twisting and seemingly causing a serious sprain. His mobility was cleared hindered, but Wilson didn’t leave the game. Week 3: Wilson exited a game against the San Francisco 49ers after twisting his left knee. He didn’t return (though he protested on the sideline) and it was revealed to be a sprain.

Wilson exited a game against the San Francisco 49ers after twisting his left knee. He didn’t return (though he protested on the sideline) and it was revealed to be a sprain. Week 7: Three days after a 6-6 tie with the Arizona Cardinals, Wilson was limited in practice due to his knee injury and a pectoral injury suffered when he was sacked by Chandler Jones. It was the first practice in his career that he didn’t full participate in.

The injuries have affected Wilson’s play and especially robbed the dynamic quarterback of his mobility. Wilson had a career-best 849 rushing yards in 2014, and his previous worst was 489 rushing yards as rookie. Through seven games this season, he has just 44 rushing yards.

That’s a drastic loss of a key element that made Wilson and the Seahawks’ offense dangerous.

Seattle can’t run the ball

The offensive line issues and Wilson’s inability to keep defenses honest have combined to create the true problem with the Seattle offense: It can’t run.

For all the damage sustained by Wilson and the inexperience of the offensive line, he has only been sacked 12 times. It’s nothing close to the 33 sacks that Andrew Luck has managed to rack up so far this season.

While Seattle’s offensive line came into Week 9 ranked No. 10 in pass protection at Football Outsiders, it is No. 27 at run blocking. The writing was on the wall for the Seahawks in 2015, when the team struggled to pave the way for Marshawn Lynch. He posted some of the worst stats of his career in an injury-plagued season, finishing with just 3.8 yards per carry and 59.6 yards per game.

With Thomas Rawls dealing with a leg fracture, the Seahawks have had to turn to Christine Michael to shoulder the load, and he’s not getting it done. It’s not that the running back is the problem, but he certainly hasn’t shown himself to be the solution either.

Getting Rawls back could go a long way toward solving the Seahawks’ offensive problems, but it’s asking a lot for one player to turn around one of the NFL’s worst rushing offenses.

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The last time the Seahawks had four consecutive games with fewer than 75 rushing yards, Dave Krieg was quarterback and Curt Warner was struggling to find running room behind the 1989 Seattle offensive line.

It was the first year of a decade of futility for the Seahawks, but that doesn’t look like it’s in the cards for Seattle anytime soon. The defense is No. 2 in points allowed and Wilson has still managed to lead the Seahawks to a 4-2-1 start. With the return of Rawls, Seattle should be even better positioned to take the NFC West crown.

But there are some serious storm clouds on the horizon with the offense seemingly regressing in October after a decent start in September. After the Monday Night Football matchup against the Buffalo Bills in Week 9, the Seahawks have back-to-back games against the tough defenses of the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles.

Unless the Seattle offense finds a way to gel soon, those look like exceedingly poor matchups for a team that already has a tenuous hold on first place.