Increased accountability, continuity on defense U-turns Seahawks’ season--just in time
The Seahawks’ defense didn’t change during a game.
It didn’t change on a field. It didn’t happen in a locker room, either.
Seattle’s defense—really, the team’s season—changed on a Wednesday night last month inside a hotel conference room in downtown Bellevue.
It was a meeting at the team’s night-before hotel prior to a key NFC West home game against Arizona, in mid-November. Ken Norton Jr., the maligned coordinator of a unit that for the first two months of this season was giving up the most points in the NFL and the most passing yards in league history, called a first-of-its-kind meeting. Norton had each player detail for the entire room his job on each of the defense’s base formations and plays.
From All-Pro Bobby Wagner and longest-tenured player K.J. Wright through third-stringer and practice-squad escapee Ryan Neal, Norton had each defender break down his responsibility aloud. Each player told everyone else his job for almost every conceivable situation and offensive formation.
The Seahawks’ 69-year-old defense-first head coach Pete Carroll called it “the best meeting I’ve ever seen.”
Since then, the Seahawks have gone from doormats to door-slammers. Seattle’s previously fatal flaw, its defense, is showing signs it may be able to keep its team in the playoff games it will have to win — likely against Green Bay, New Orleans and the Los Angeles Rams — to get out of the NFC and into the Super Bowl.
The defense had been averaging 400-plus yards and 30-plus points allowed in September and October. The day after the meeting, it shut down Kyler Murray and the formerly first-place Cardinals, holding them to 314 yards and 21 points in a key win that pushed Arizona into a four-game losing streak that ended only Sunday.
Then the Seahawks held the Eagles to 250 yards and 16 points in a win at Philadelphia.
They limited the Giants to 290 yards and 17 points.
Sunday, the Seahawks throttled the admittedly awful New York Jets, holding them to but three points and 185 yards in Seattle’s biggest blowout win in more than eight years, 40-3.
“These last few weeks have been excellent. We’ve just played a really good, team ball,” Wright, the 10th-year outside linebacker, said. “The communication is on point. The limiting of explosive plays also has on point. We just really plan together.
“I just love the way that we have our Saturday-night meetings where we are all just talking about: what’s our assignment? What’s expected of you when the play is called?’
“It’s really, really good. We’ve just got to continue. It going to be important down this last stretch into the playoffs that we can just keep this chemistry going.”
Huge trends
Carroll had a bushel of positives to smile about following Sunday’s game:
- the expected rebound of Russell Wilson from a five-sack, 12-point disaster against the Giants to a four-touchdown day passing and setting the Seahawks’ season record with his 36th TD pass of the season.
- Chris Carson fully returning to the offense with 76 plowing yards rushing, his most since week four. That was before he missed a month with a sprained foot.
- Jamal Adams getting a rare Seahawks game ball in the locker room from Carroll following the game for setting an NFL record for sacks by a defensive back for a season in the win over Adams’ old team.
- DK Metcalf doing DK Metcalf things again—including going into the empty stands to present a birthday message from his fellow wide receivers to a startled CBS television cameraperson.
“I hope it was worthy of a penalty,” Carroll said of Metcalf’s unsportsmanlike foul.
Yet what mattered most to Carroll, what has him believing with three games left in the push to next month’s playoffs his Seahawks are finally where they need to be, is the defense.
It is attacking instead of reacting. It is pressuring instead of wilting when quarterbacks pressure its coverage. It is healthier, with Adams back from a strained groin that kept him out in October.
Heck, big-man defensive tackle Poona Ford almost—should have—had his first-ever interception Sunday. Wright leaped with Ford for the pass from Sam Darnold that Seattle defensive end L.J. Collier batted straight up. Wright and Ford knocked each other off another of what should have been at least three interceptions Sunday.
Pro Bowl cornerback Shaquill Griffin had one of his best games of the last two season. He knocked two throws away from defenders with tight coverage in the end zone on two plays in the first half, when the game was still at least semi-close.
Ford and fellow defensive tackle Jarran Reed enjoyed more support from massive run stuffer Damon “Snacks” Harrison in the middle as the Jets managed just 69 yards on 23 rushes.
Only two teams have rushed for more than 70 yards in a game against the Seahawks since October: the Rams (106) and the Giants (190)
Seattle had 12 sacks in the first seven games. Then it got two-time Pro Bowl defensive end Carlos Dunlap in a trade. Ford and fellow tackle Jarran Reed became better pass rushers playing next to Dunlap. Adams kept blitzing upon his return.
The Seahawks had three more sacks Sunday, even with Dunlap missing the game with a sprained foot. Shaquem Griffin stormed in on Darnold in the second half for his first sack since Seattle’s playoff loss at Green Bay 11 months ago.
The Seahawks have 24 sacks in their last six games, moving from the bottom to near the top of the NFL in those game-changing plays.
“There’s a lot of guys that are really playing, playing like crazy, because you can see it happening,” Carroll said. “Just throw the weeks together. Three sacks again today. Good pass defense. Really, should have had more turnovers. ...
“I’m just really fired up that at this time of year we’re playing our best football. It can make a difference if we’re going to have a chance to do something special this year.
“It’s going to be because the defense has really turned it around and put us in this competition. We know that we can put up points. We know we can do that on offense.
“But to put this together like this is a really big deal for us.”
Guys finally together
Carroll thinks back to September and October and pretty much shakes his head at the difference. The Seahawks had new starters at cornerback (Quinton Dunbar), strong safety (Adams), weakside linebacker (rookie Jordyn Brooks) and both defensive-end spots (Benson Mayowa, L.J. Collier). Wright was moving to strongside linebacker, which he hadn’t played in Carroll’s 4-3 since 2012, to make room for the speedy Brooks at the more quick-moving weakside spot off the ball.
Dunlap was still in Cincinnati. Adams and Dunbar were injured. The team did not set a foundation during offseason practices because the coronavirus pandemic canceled all of them. The entire NFL looked like pinball games with all the scoring early this season. Wilson had to outscore the world, basically be perfect and on pace for league records for touchdown passes through the first two months for Seattle to have any chance at winning.
“We just didn’t have the continuity,” Carroll said Sunday.
Now?
“First off, there’s real consistency happening here, in scheme, how we’re placing our guys, what we’re asking them to do, Our guys are really on their game, and you can see it,” Carroll said.
“We took a step forward in terms of accountability and awareness and just really bracing for asking them to do with principles. And so that in itself gives us a chance to make the adjustments that we have to make to stay in the game to fix things as we need to fix them. And meanwhile, play really hard to aggressive and tough at the line of scrimmage, you know.”
Carroll throws out the letdowns, missed assignments and a 60-yard run against a one-time blitz by the Giants in the third quarter and says this is the best run defense Seattle has played this season.
“And our pass rush is the best it has been all season,” Carroll said.
“Ken’s doing a fantastic job of mixing stuff that has repetitions, using the right guys. Bobby (Wagner) was a real factor today. Jamal, again, a factor and finding a way to really mix these guys and put them in into strengths. K.J. has really good plays today on the edge. So, it’s all of that really adds up to the back to the consistency.
“We just needed the time. ...I mean, look at the scores again around the league, again. The scores were down in some big games again on defense.
“There’s a turn that’s happened around the league. It took us all a long time.”
This story was originally published December 13, 2020 at 6:39 PM with the headline "Increased accountability, continuity on defense U-turns Seahawks’ season--just in time."
