D Gives Up 17 play TD Drive to Preview Season

[Smellyman]

Even with that 17 yard play they still kept the cow patties under 100 yards total for the game, chill out bro, Jesus.

it was the short dink and unk passes to TEs and slots over the middle that got many 3rd down conversions. only Achilles heel to LOB too.

 

[pmedic920]

Has @Fade even been back since he started this thread?


I suspect we got trolled.

 

[Maelstrom787]

For those of you who put stock into PFF - they are liking what they see.

 

[Scout]

Pre season is very hard to judge. The Bucs for example defensively were shaky game 1 against the Steelers but cleaned up their play for the most part in game 2 against the Jets. And the Bucs didn't have many of their starting defensive players out there in game 1 and 2.

Packers like the Bucs and the Chargers have been mixing and matching 1s, 2s and 3s in their respective defensive lineups.

For the Hawks that is a good sign to be in the company of these defenses as they are talented. The key is that gap discipline and tackling goes a long way because a lot of modern NFL teams have athletes that can run. But being able to be consistent and play with control is a lot harder on defense. The Hawks last year were flying around defensively but lost a lot of gap control but this year I sense a change. Lets hope for the best with the revamped starting front seven.

 

[Fade]

Has @Fade even been back since he started this thread?


I suspect we got trolled.

Naw, just been busy. I have a lot on my plate and just trying to carve out time here and there when I can.

 

[sc85sis]

Wow, they gave up a single TD drive in a preseason game. The horrors!

 

[pmedic920]

Naw, just been busy. I have a lot on my plate and just trying to carve out time here and there when I can.

Fair enough but come on man, what exactly are your expectations?

You must have very high standards if you’re already this down and out.

 

[Fade]

For those of you who put stock into PFF - they are liking what they see.

That ranking says more about the 3's & 4's than the 1's and 2's. Which is fine and could be a good indicator of depth. It's preseason so, team stats, team grades, and team records are hard to evaluate in preseason.

But my off-season concerns haven't been related to talent. I think the Seahawks are loaded, the defense was middle of the pack last year talent wise, and Hurtt had them playing at a bottom 7 level.

It's scheme, coordinating, preparation, and adjustments. Evaluating Hurtt in this game in the early going, with the talent on the field that matters when the real games start was disapointing to see. The stooge DC continues to blitz while playing a softzone behind it on 3rd and manageble, which keeps his unit on the field and the Seahawks offense off of it.

With the additions they've made on defense there is no excuse why they can't be a top 10 unit. They have massive overall investment on defense that many may not realize, but Pete gave the keys to a guy that wouldn't be a DC anywhere else in the NFL, like Norton before him.

They have the corners and safeties to play a smothering man 2 man, pressure based scheme. But they probably won't, because… I have no idea why?

3rd down and obvious pass, they should put Love on the TE, Witherspoon and Woolen on the opponents top 2 WRs, Tre Brown their 3rd best cover corner on the opponents #3. They have an embarrassment of riches in the secondary that can allow them to play a certain way that other orgs can only dream of.

They roll 4 deep off of the edge, Bobby can blitz, and so can Jamal, and Bush too for that matter. Lock guys up on the outside, force the QB to hold the ball, and great things will happen.

They have the personnel to play a certain way, and I'm afraid they are going to ignore it, play soft zone, telegraph the 5th guy blitzing, the opposing QB sees it coming a mile away. QB flicks it out to the open RB in the flat or the TE over the middle for the easy 1st down. As we watch another game where the defense bleeds out cause they can get off the field.

Even worse I could see them starting Mike Jackson, the new Trey Flowers. And opposing QBs attack him over and over on 3rd down. In the early going of this game it was a preview of just that.

That was the preview. A highly talented defense, held back by asinine scheme.

In the Pete Carroll era, they have never played one scheme in the preseason, and then flipped to a totally different scheme once the regular season started.

Ken Norton was dropping DE's in coverage in the preseason, refusing to play nickel in the preseason, and sure enough the regular season rolled around and they were still doing it. So my concerns are justified.

 

[Smellyman]

Holy over analyze preseason Batman

 

[LTH]

That ranking says more about the 3's & 4's than the 1's and 2's. Which is fine and could be a good indicator of depth. It's preseason so, team stats, team grades, and team records are hard to evaluate in preseason.

But my off-season concerns haven't been related to talent. I think the Seahawks are loaded, the defense was middle of the pack last year talent wise, and Hurtt had them playing at a bottom 7 level.

It's scheme, coordinating, preparation, and adjustments. Evaluating Hurtt in this game in the early going, with the talent on the field that matters when the real games start was disapointing to see. The stooge DC continues to blitz while playing a softzone behind it on 3rd and manageble, which keeps his unit on the field and the Seahawks offense off of it.

With the additions they've made on defense there is no excuse why they can't be a top 10 unit. They have massive overall investment on defense that many may not realize, but Pete gave the keys to a guy that wouldn't be a DC anywhere else in the NFL, like Norton before him.

They have the corners and safeties to play a smothering man 2 man, pressure based scheme. But they probably won't, because… I have no idea why?

3rd down and obvious pass, they should put Love on the TE, Witherspoon and Woolen on the opponents top 2 WRs, Tre Brown their 3rd best cover corner on the opponents #3. They have an embarrassment of riches in the secondary that can allow them to play a certain way that other orgs can only dream of.

They roll 4 deep off of the edge, Bobby can blitz, and so can Jamal, and Bush too for that matter. Lock guys up on the outside, force the QB to hold the ball, and great things will happen.

They have the personnel to play a certain way, and I'm afraid they are going to ignore it, play soft zone, telegraph the 5th guy blitzing, the opposing QB sees it coming a mile away. QB flicks it out to the open RB in the flat or the TE over the middle for the easy 1st down. As we watch another game where the defense bleeds out cause they can get off the field.

Even worse I could see them starting Mike Jackson, the new Trey Flowers. And opposing QBs attack him over and over on 3rd down. In the early going of this game it was a preview of just that.

That was the preview. A highly talented defense, held back by asinine scheme.

In the Pete Carroll era, they have never played one scheme in the preseason, and then flipped to a totally different scheme once the regular season started.

Ken Norton was dropping DE's in coverage in the preseason, refusing to play nickel in the preseason, and sure enough the regular season rolled around and they were still doing it. So my concerns are justified.

Ok so like I said before the Seahawks are playing vanilla schemes with out the full starting D on the field. How can you judge Hurt until you get a good look at what he is doing. He hasn't shown you his cards yet.

What am I missing?

LTH

 

[Maelstrom787]

That ranking says more about the 3's & 4's than the 1's and 2's. Which is fine and could be a good indicator of depth. It's preseason so, team stats, team grades, and team records are hard to evaluate in preseason.

But my off-season concerns haven't been related to talent. I think the Seahawks are loaded, the defense was middle of the pack last year talent wise, and Hurtt had them playing at a bottom 7 level.

It's scheme, coordinating, preparation, and adjustments. Evaluating Hurtt in this game in the going, with the talent on the field that matters when the real games start was disapointing to see. The stooge DC continues to blitz while playing a softzone behind it on 3rd and manageble, which keeps his unit on the field and the Seahawks offense off of it.

With the additions they've made on defense there is no excuse why they can't be a top 10 unit. They have massive overall investment on defense that many may not realize, but Pete gave the keys to a guy that wouldn't be a DC anywhere else in the NFL, like Norton before him.

They have the corners and safeties to play a smothering man 2 man, pressure based scheme. But they probably won't, because… I have no idea why?

3rd down and obvious pass, they should put Love on the TE, Witherspoon and Woolen on the opponents top 2 WRs, Tre Brown their 3rd best cover corner on the opponents #3. They have an embarrassment of riches in the secondary that can allow them to play a certain way that other orgs can only dream of.

They roll 4 deep off of the edge, Bobby can blitz, and so can Jamal, and Bush too for that matter. Lock guys up on the outside, force the QB to hold the ball, and great things will happen.

They have the personnel to play a certain way, and I'm afraid they are going to ignore it, play soft zone, telegraph the 5th guy blitzing, the opposing QB sees it coming a mile away. QB whips it out to the open RB in the flat or the TE over the middle for the easy 1st down. As we watch another game where the defense bleeds out cause they can get off the field.

Even worse I could see them starting Mike Jackson, the new Trey Flowers. And opposing QBs attack him over and over on 3rd down. In the early going of this game it was a preview of just that.

That was the preview. A highly talented defense, held back by asinine scheme.

In the Pete Carroll era, they have never played one scheme in the preseason, and then flipped to a totally different scheme once the regular season started.

Ken Norton was dropping DE's in coverage in the preseason, refusing to play nickel in the preseason, and sure enough the regular season rolled around and they were still doing it. So my concerns are justified.

They're not necessarily unjustified concerns, I agree. I just disagree with the severity of the worries. At the very least, the depth is starting to look superior again and they're playing with some sorely-missed purpose this preseason.

If we're projecting the regular season based on the preseason, it seems to me like they'll be middling with upside. There are still serious holes, but the overall performance has been decent and there are some ascendant talents.

Agreed on Jackson. Need Brown to win that role decisively. Hard to count on him based on his career so far, but he's obviously the superior talent.

I don't know if I can agree that they're talented enough to be a top-ten lock with questions at ILB and IDL, but serious upside there.

 

[pittpnthrs]

Except it's not the same old thing. If you wanna boil it down to 'we are great' or 'we suck', well you can look at the last several years on offense (last year aside) and defense and say 'we suck'. But it's not that simple, nor is the cause for failure the same year over year. In 2020 and 2021, we had a suspect pass defense and solid enough run defense. In 2022, we were solid through the air on defense but bad against the run.
Two different problems, different coordinators over that span with drastically different results, run v pass, and entirely different personnel.
Prior to that, and up until the dismantling of thr LOB, we became a middle of the pack overall.
So if you wanna have a substantive conversation about the evolving or devolving unit that has been our defense, at least tie it to fact.
Post LOB we tried to substitute out parts but with low round draft picks and without players that brought the necessary attitude, so we went from great and revolutionary, to watered down and less talented.
The first aspect of our D to suffer post LOB was our short to middle pass defense. Offenses figured us out and we were slow to react. Our pass D rankings plummeted and reached their worse point in 2020. Our run D was solid, and overall, we were top 10 in scoring defense, or just outside of it.
We were slow to adapt thereafter and looked to the addition of a Swiss army knife type of talent in Jamal to help our D regain a schematic advantage by making us less predictable, while still adhering to the core philosophy that brought us success.
Then, in 2021 we shifted our approach and went wholesale into a schematic shift that saw (frustratingly) a defense using players that looked to be out of position ( adams playing deep, Dunlap dropping off the line) in what was the first step toward what we were supposed to see in 2022.
Then, in 2022, the player the defense was built around went down in week 1 and for that reason and others that have been documented, the defense spent 17 games trying to adapt, then revert, then adapt again without key players to lead the effort.
This year, the FO was tasked with filling the voids in a leaky unit. When they didn't see the value or personnel they wanted on the interior Dline, they got the best talent available in other spots with the goal of building dominance on special teams, the running game, passing game, and pass defense, to cover for whatever inadequacies they might have at the one position they couldn't fortify in the way they wanted.
But its not as tbough they've not addressed the run defense. In their estimation and has been reasonably supported, much of the failure last year had nothing to do with not having a J Carter type on the D line, but rather with not playing sound gap responsible defense in the run game. So they brought Bobby back to run things on the field, brought Reed back to provide stout play and penitratiom inside, added Cameron Young and a slew of young and veteran talent on the edges, and look to be going back to the approach they likely were hoping to settle into when they first brought Adams onboard. So less front play that we saw in 2022 and more of what we've been used to. 3-4 looks with 1 gap play and penetratiom on the interior.
None of that is what we saw last year. None of it is a continuation of anything in any way.

Again, you can call it ' continued ' sucking if you want, but based on what? A preseason game?. that carries about as much water as the arguments that said Geno would suck here prior to last year because he sucked before, pointing to statistical evidence as proof and cherrypicking every error in his preseason performance to use as basis for predicting failure.

We may well not turn into a top 5 to 10 defense this year. We may only be 15 to 20 against the run. But if we are that, it won't be because we don't know what we are doing. It will be because some other aspect of the improved areas of the team weren't as effective, or that communication of responsibilities and execution was poor.

But it would have to be woefully poor to warrant the doom and gloom by the OP of this thread.

Basic knowledge of thr game and evaluation of the choices we've made make it pretty obvious that the 2023 TEAMWIDE strategy to win games involves controlling the ball, stopping teams from throwing against us via pressure and coverage, and limiting oppositions run effectiveness by making it illogical for them to run in the first place (getting a lead and holding the ball and making running a losing strategy against us) . Teams won't want to kean in the run if they are behind. And it will be easier for us to defend the run if we put the opposing teams passing game under pressure and make it predictable.

For us to fail to the magnitude the OP predicts we'd have to fail completely as a team. And that's just not likely given the changes we've made.

Good post and I understand what your saying and what they are trying to do, but there is still room for skepticism. Grabbing the lead and trying to force the opposing team to pass because they are behind sounds great, but how realistic is that approach? The opposing team is going to play defense too. I believe the games the Hawks lose this year will be games in which the opposing teams run the ball heavily and Seattle will struggle to stop it. While the defense is an unknown as of yet, I have the feeling they are still going to struggle in the trenches. I'm concerned with the linebacker corps too. Having Bobby back with his knowledge and getting people into position is a nice advantage to have but he's not the Bobby of old anymore, plus he's a stopgap. How long is he going to play? A year, maybe two and then its back to Brooks who looked like a deer in headlights in the same roll. Bush,,,,umm yeah. Not sold.

Again, the defense could turn out to be spectacular, who knows, but there is room for concern. We'll just have to wait and see and hope for the best.

 

[SoulfishHawk]

Absolutely there is room for concern. Not because of a pre-season game at all. That Run D was pathetic last year. Until I see it get much better, I will be concerned with the defense as a whole. I suspect they will improve, but that wouldn't take much.
That all being said, I think this team is going to be much better overall than last year. Just my opinion.

 

[Sgt. Largent]

A defense featuring many starters (Nwosu, JReed, Mafe, Michael Jackson, and Devin Bush along with rotational players looked eerily similar to what they looked like last season, while getting carved up by a Dallas squad who played no starters.

If you're not concerned about this after recent history, I don't know what to tell you.

We're just thankful you're worried enough for all of us Fade.

I put very little importance on pre-season games where 70-80% of the starters aren't playing, and teams are playing very vanilla schemes and defenses, as to not give real game prep ammunition.

So no, I'm not concerned. If we see these same things 4-5 games into the regular season? You can color me concerned. 2nd pre-season game playing vanilla schemes with only a handful of starters? Nope.

 

[balakoth]

A defense featuring many starters (Nwosu, JReed, Mafe, Michael Jackson, and Devin Bush along with rotational players looked eerily similar to what they looked like last season, while getting carved up by a Dallas squad who played no starters.

If you're not concerned about this after recent history, I don't know what to tell you.

This is funny to me.. because just a few days ago in a pre season thread and performance you were "Its preseason, there is no stock to take from this" (paraphrase basically)

 

[Hawkmode]

Amazing how much stock fans put in pre-season ...its merely the time to evaluate roster cuts for positions undecided on or keeping the best depth pieces. Starters who play seldom have roster positions on the line and are playing vanilla versions of offensive and defensive schemes...its to get ready for the hard hitting that the season calls for and to get communication ironed out for both offense and defense. Relax and enjoy the possibility of some bubble players making the roster and living their dream...we have the makings of a very good team!

 

[SoulfishHawk]

No doubt. Can't really take it too seriously when several starters are not even playing.

 

[Recon_Hawk]

I'm pretty sure Nwosu and JReed weren't playing in the drive that OP is complaining about, so the complaint about the "starters" is really about Mafe (who played great) and Jackson & Bush (who probably won't be starters once Spoon and Brooks are healthy).

It's not even regular season and OP is in mid-season form lol

 

[JimmyNightshade]

I'm pretty sure Nwosu and JReed weren't playing in the drive that OP is complaining about, so the complaint about the "starters" is really about Mafe (who played great) and Jackson & Bush (who probably won't be starters once Spoon and Brooks are healthy).

It's not even regular season and OP is in mid-season form lol

Haha, no they weren’t. So out of 11 players, two of the supposed five starters OP crying about weren’t out there…and the other three “starters” have yet to prove they are anything other than rotational players.

One preseason drive kept alive by unfortunate long third down completions on Jackson. Hardly reason for concern—especially considering how they’ve played most of the time. Unlike last year, in which this team consistently struggled to tackle and misplayed their assignments…which was evident every game in the preseason and persisted throughout the regular season…there is no such pattern here.

Just a stubborn, lazy attempt to validate a pessimistic persona. Should be met with nothing more than a shrug and chuckle.

 

[chrispy]

It's fair to be worried. If this team plays to it's potential, there's not a game they'll be out of. However, it's also unlikely everything will go smoothly every game. This team has a huge margin between potential and expectations.

Fade's criticism of Pete and his staff is based in reality, even if it seems over-the-top to some of us much if the time. I view it as a chicken or egg conundrum. Pete gets more out of his players, and finds "diamonds in the rough" more often than other coaches. He's accomplished that because he connects personally with them and sees their personal traits in addition to their athletic traits. Replace Pete with Bill Parcels and Riq (or Sherm or Lynch or ADB or...) probably would have never reached the same level. On the flip side, the "business decisions" that Jim Irsay and Jerry Jones brush off like a gnat stretch out for Pete because they're painful for him. It's not difficult to see some examples where he's given 2nd, 3rd and 4th chances to someone because he believes in them, as a person. His recent interview with Sherm said as much. Sherm asked why he stuck with him after his first start. Both Sherm and Pete acknowledged there were better options after his obvious mistakes. Pete had no answer except, "I just believed in you". The rest is history.
I don't know how to identify that thin line between a Richard Sherman that needs one more chance and a Coordinator (or QB) that has used their chances up.

I do know last year's D was hard to watch at times. I know I really wanted to see some change this off season. There's consistent agreement on these points. We've seen a lot of change on the defensive side of the ball. This thread's disagreement results solely from prioritizing specific changes above those that have already been made.

I think it's fair to criticize the DC. It's also true that Pete eventually cuts the cord in situations that cannot be salvaged. We just don't know if this is a one-more-chance or a cut-the-cord situation, from his perspective. We know on which side many people on .net fall but Pete has the ultimate decision and has to directly live with the results. Whether we agree with his decision(s) or not, I think we all agree that we hope he makes (made) the correct call.