Seahawks Football: 4 Things To Watch For
Matty F. Brown identifies 4 things he will be looking out for as Mike Macdonald's Seattle Seahawks kick off the 2024 season:
Ahead of the 2024 season of Seahawks football, here are four things I’ll be keeping a close eye on. This quartet will be indicators of Mike Macdonald’s successes and failures as the new head coach in Seattle. Let’s revisit these midway through the festivities:
What does Ryan Grubb’s run attack look like in real football?
Even after the preseason, there are unknowns when it comes to the college-to-pros transition Ryan Grubb’s offense faces.
In the FBS, Grubb’s pass percentage ranked 15th-highest at the University of Washington (2022-2023) and 17th at Fresno State (2019-2021).
Yet star receiver DK Metcalf revealed to reporters on Wednesday that Grubb, in his first offensive meeting, immediately outlined an expectation that the Seahawks run the ball.
“Our run game,” Metcalf predicted of Seattle’s offensive bread-and-butter. “We’re going to run the ball downhill and make the defense stop our run first.”
It’s fitting, then, that it was Grubb’s rushing attack—not the pass—which stood out most in preseason ‘ball. The most impressive aspect was the ground game’s ability to consistently generate advantageous match-ups, angles, and creases for blockers and runners.
A large part of this was Grubb’s usage of pre-snap motion, like getting a tight end going across the mesh and/or the creation of a nub formation.
The conceptual variety and wrinkles to Grubb’s rushing offense also looked good, with a combination of just about everything—and the majority executed well. There was even some stuff where the run hit in a different direction to which the defense would expect, the ball carrier’s path further obfuscated by pistol formation usage where the back aligned behind the quarterback without a clear directional tell.
In college, Grubb utilized far more zone rushing concepts than gap-blocking concepts. However, 2023 saw a marked shift in his approach, as Sports Info Solutions’ charting illustrates:
2021 Fresno State (without OL coach Scott Huff): 77% zone to 21% gap
2022 Washington: 77% zone to 22% gap
2023 Washington: 60% zone to 40% gap
Last season was an especially pass-happy campaign, even for Grubb, but perhaps this type of shift to gap concepts will continue into the pros? It would certainly add further run game diversity and exploit the common structures of current NFL defenses.
In terms of the overall mentality of running the ball, establishing the run in the old-school sense has rightly been derided as ineffective. Nevertheless, the positive impact of a successful run game was described well by Metcalf:
“After that, it’s pretty much dealer’s choice with how we want to take the game from there. We can continue to run the ball or push the ball down the field or get singled up on the outside and exploit the corners.”
Macdonald arrives in Seattle as a defensive head coach who has worked under the Harbaugh brothers. Both prominently feature strong run games in their attacks, so it will be fascinating to track the schematic blend of Grubb’s rushing, along with its overall efficiency and how truly run-first the maiden NFL play caller is.
Can the offensive line let Geno Smith shine?
Prior to Metcalf’s comments, a lot of the talk surrounding Grubb’s system had been of a “dropback” attack—as summarized by quarterback Geno Smith.
We saw a tantalizing glimpse of this from the first-string offense: a 5-play, 62-yard drive, full of vertical deep passes via the shotgun, and it culminated in a Smith 21-yard touchdown strike to Metcalf, with DK winning vertically on a fade route.
That successful cameo comes with the caveat that Seattle’s 1s (themselves admittedly without presumed starting center Connor Williams and Tyler Lockett) were facing a blend of Cleveland starters and backups.
Regardless, it was still a reminder of what Smith is able to do at quarterback when given the time to connect downfield with his weapons.
It was also a semi-throwback to a more vertical Seattle offense, the kind we saw prior to Shane Waldron’s arrival.
We can get chicken-or-the-egg, pass-protection-limitations-or-playcaller, about this. Whatever the reasons for past aerial differences, we know that Grubb wants to take downfield shots.
We also know that what killed Seattle’s offense was not the play of Smith, but instead the horrible pass protection that the Seahawks suffered from their nine different starting OL combinations.
Geno was the sixth-most pressured quarterback in the NFL, playing with a style that, unlike the other five QBs, shouldn’t have resulted in such pressure. Third down pass protection worsened throughout the season and he was pressured in 50.9% of these situations. It was bad.
This off-season saw John Schneider totally revamp the interior of Seattle’s o-line, with three of the 2023 projected starters now gone: Damien Lewis, Austin Blythe, and Phil Haynes.
At right tackle, third-year Abraham Lucas, still recovering from his off-season knee surgery, is a “play the long game” deal per Schneider. George Fant’s return to the Pacific Northwest on non-insignificant money is the emergency measure.
That leaves Seattle with a total of four new projected week 1 starters on their o-line, with second-year right guard Anthony Bradford—the fourth rounder who started 10 games last season—being pushed hard by 2024 third-round draft pick Christian Haynes and veteran OL McClendon Curtis.
Are they able to get it done in a season that for Smith is one of the greatest “prove-it” campaigns we have seen? The quarterback turns 34 in October, is being paid just $12.7million for 2024, and has the last year of his deal, in 2025, completely non-guaranteed.
How does this defense evolve?
Evolution? Macdonald coordinated an elite defense in Baltimore—the first in history to lead the league in sacks, turnovers, and points allowed—a unit so good that it saw Macdonald become one of the hottest names on the head coach market, I hear you say!
Well, yes... Stay with me here. Consider the following.
The prominent factors in Macdonald’s success are his playcalling “feel” and layering, his game-planning, and, before all that juicy stuff, his “streamlining”—Macdonald’s own words—of an existing Ravens defensive system, albeit with a hint of his spell with Todd Grantham.
Over the years, Baltimore’s scheme has been proliferated league-wide, by multiple coaches across various teams. Macdonald has triumphed in the system because he has taught it, schemed it and called it at an elite level.
What, though, when this system experiences issues?
When the 2023 Ravens achieved those great overall results, they of course experienced difficulties, similar to those which any defence faces in a given year.
What stands out as more troubling, though, is that Baltimore failed to correct two emerging issues as the second half of the season progressed. The pair of problems snowballed, which suggests that, rather than these being brief troubles, they were actually issues of a more systemic nature.
The Ravens’ second-of-the-season run defense and man coverage collapses (from top tier to bottom) are clear for all to see, and were prominent enough in the game film and data to lead to two Seahawks On Tape articles. Rivals will be paying close attention.
Macdonald now faces the challenge of staying ahead of the NFL on these problems with a lot of newness surrounding him.
He is coaching with almost an entirely new coaching staff. On the defensive side, Macdonald has only ever worked with assistant head coach Leslie Frazier and assistant Josh Bynes previously. This should bring some fresh solutions to solve issues. But it is also a reminder of the latest sprinkling of Baltimore’s defensive system: Macdonald’s iteration has put new playcallers in Miami, Tennessee, and Baltimore, along with these DCs bringing numerous assistants with them.
Like the Brandon Staley, Pete Carroll, en-vogue defenses before them, this is the new must-have. We are seeing a similar brain drain from those who made what happened in Baltimore under Macdonald possible. And, in such a migration of minds, the leaking of system information is inevitable: for instance, ask yourself how half of Twitter is seemingly in possession of the 2022 Ravens linebackers manual?
In this environment, just imagine what the league’s most dastardly offensive minds have learned, then decided is the best course of attack for 2024 versus Macdonald. Three of those schemers just so happen to reside in the NFC West: the esteemed Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay, then the underrated Drew Petzing.
This is not meant to be a grim forecast. Instead, it sets the stage for Macdonald to continue to prove himself as the best defensive mind in football. Evolution can, will, and must take place.
There were promising signs in the preseason of tweaked run fit mechanics that tie in nicely with defensive coordinator Aden Durde’s background in Dallas.
Example:https://twitter.com/mattyfbrown/status/1828244541704675673?s=46&t=b9ONI9tV5DKl6148IamKQg
Example:https://twitter.com/mattyfbrown/status/1826335444008923594?s=46&t=b9ONI9tV5DKl6148IamKQg
Example:https://twitter.com/mattyfbrown/status/1824509862622958024?s=46&t=b9ONI9tV5DKl6148IamKQg
Example:https://twitter.com/mattyfbrown/status/1824515156614758542?s=46&t=b9ONI9tV5DKl6148IamKQg
Meanwhile, the personnel available to Macdonald in Seattle features a highly thought of defensive line and defensive back rooms, yet a more questionable linebacker group.
What this leads to playcalling and structure-wise should look adjusted from Macdonald’s Baltimore days, where he enjoyed LBs Roquan Smith and Patrick Queen—particularly, and in contrast to Macdonald’s current situation, in intermediate pass coverage.
The coach will find the best deployments for his Seahawks players. I look forward to seeing this play out.
What does adversity look like?
As a first-time head coach, Macdonald so far appears to be ticking all the boxes. He is establishing a new culture in Seattle with slogans like “make it right”, “staying frosty”, and “chasing edges.” By all accounts, the vibes around the team feel great.
There are, though, unknowns that will only be answered this coming year.
How does Macdonald—and the Seahawks—handle the moments when the inevitable adversity of a football season strikes? How real is the culture that Macdonald is building? How solid are the foundations?
The context of Macdonald’s situation is one of great expectations, with Seattle’s young roster projected to ascend and Schneider describing last year as a disappointment.
The Seahawks’ fanbase, meanwhile, has been spoiled and grim franchise struggles are a hazy recollection for some 12s—or even a completely foreign concept for the newer fans.
Pete Carroll won a lot of football games. It’s easy to forget that in the post-Legion of Boom era, from 2018 onwards, Seattle was still the 10th-winningest football team in the NFL with a .567 record.
It was only really the last season where things looked truly shaky: a negative points differential, four-game losing streak, and postseason absence soured the 9-8 winning record.
In essence, then, how does Macdonald, in this environment, be a Sean McVay-style success story, overcoming the bumps and proving he can still contribute his football genius as a young head coach, as opposed to failing like a Brandon Staley disaster?
We’re about to find out.
This article was edited by Alistair Corp