Top 4 Seahawks Training Camp Battles
As 2023 Seahawks Training Camp starts, Matty F. Brown looks at the four most competitive training camp battles to keep a closer eye on.
Seahawks Training Camp is upon us. For another season, his 14th in Seattle, Pete Carroll’s “Always Compete” will be implemented. While that mantra has always been signposted at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center, this post-Russell Wilson, Geno Smith-era of the team has rejuvenated the competition element. The franchise has experienced significant roster turnover and enjoyed some high draft picks. In 2023, they’re only just getting started.
Like any season, there are certain positions that are more obviously competitive battles. It’s exciting that this year’s camp features multiple areas where Seattle has young talent pushing solid veterans. Here are the top 4 areas to keep a closer eye on as the competition begins.
Left Cornerback/Nickel/Dime Back
Like 2022, cornerback is going to be hotly contested. Where 2023 differs to the previous season is that the intensity of the battle stems from a different source.
Last offseason, Seattle was faced with unknowns on both the right and left sides. Tariq Woolen was an ambitious project, a fifth round pick for a reason. Mike Jackson a mystery, discarded by three other franchises in two seasons. Artie Burns a cheap free agency add, scheme familiarity the main plus. The only supposed “sure thing”, left-sided Sidney Jones, suffered a concussion and quickly fell down the order despite starting 11 games in 2021. Things looked scary.
A year on and the Seahawks have a wealth of viable options at cornerback.
That’s thanks to their small 2022 investments paying off in a big, quick way. Tellingly, the work of defensive backs coach Karl Scott was rewarded with a promotion to defensive passing game coordinator.
Seattle’s depth is also what happens when you add a 5th overall pick to an already blossoming cornerback group. Rather than corner being open, like it was just one year ago, Seattle now has reliable starters on both the right and the left plus an additional high investment.
Woolen’s remarkable quickness in learning the professional details required to succeed at the position, along with his athletic gifts offsetting some of his raw deficiencies, saw the 24-year-old named to the PFWA All-Rookie team and earn Pro Bowl honors. He has the right side locked up.
Jackson, meanwhile, was a quiet success story on the left side. The lack of conversation around the 26-year-old’s game speaks to his success: he wasn’t beat deep, he hit guys hard, and he earned every cent of the tender he signed in March.
Witherspoon is there to take Jackson’s job. Jackson will be intimately aware of that fact and he has already responded, earning high praise during Organized Team Activities.
“Michael Jackson's had the best camp of anybody,” Pete Carroll told reporters June 8th. “He had a great camp, and he's stepped up for the challenge of it, had just a really productive, almost a dominant camp for us, and so that was great to see that.”
Regardless of Jackson impressing early, it may seem obvious that Witherspoon will eventually win that spot given the difference in investment, and theoretical ceiling, between the pair. Jackson’s opportunity only arrived thanks to Woolen requiring a knee scope operation, with most of Jackson’s play coming on the right side of the defense, rather than his 2022 left.
The added dimension to this battle, though, is Witherspoon’s skillset working in the slot. The 22-year-old has the tools to match up man-to-man with wide receivers with a style that safeties don’t bring. By playing Witherspoon in the slot, it gets his physicality and instincts closer to the line of scrimmage and closer to the football. This further unlocks his blitzing ability, which is more difficult to do on the perimeter given the tighter NFL hashmarks.
We already saw slot ‘Spoon in OTAs, the rookie spending significant time inside while Coby Bryant was sidelined with a toe injury. Bryant, looking to build on a solid rookie season, isn’t going to relinquish this easily either. Remember also that Carroll told me in Munich, back in November, that Bryant “can be as good as anybody,” at the nickel position.
Part of the question for Seattle’s coaches will be whether they can get more out of a Bryant and Witherspoon combination, or better stuff from a Jackson and Witherspoon mix, meaning the competition is as much between Bryant and Jackson as it is between them and Witherspoon.
Witherspoon’s ability, and competitive nature likened to Polamalu by Carroll in the post-draft pressers, has the potential to eat into the snaps of multiple players. Even the safeties, and the different nickel-like skillsets that each of Julian Love, Jamal Adams, and Quandre Diggs—heck, potentially even rookie 6th round pick Jerrick Reed II—bring. This is going to be an ongoing battle for opportunities in each defensive sub-package: nickel, big nickel, dime, big dime.
Oh, and Artie Burns, now 28-years-old, is back in Seattle too.
Interior Defensive Line
This is a messy read. Parts of the position group look like the Seahawks are attempting a similar strategy to what worked for them at corner last offseason. At this point, though, we know even less. That’s because, while OTAs can provide significant detail on WRs and DBs, it is hard to tell who is standing out in the trenches until the pads come on.
As Carroll said June 8th about 4th round pick Cameron Young: “We needed a big guy inside and we got one, and he looks like he can fill the bill. We won't know until we get into pads though. We've got to figure out really how things work for him, and how he sees things, and how he responds.”
In the padded-up training camp, the coaching staff, and onlookers, should gain more of an idea of who is leading the IDL contest.
On the roster, there are bigger bodies who look more like 3-techniques than nose tackles, but could play some nose in a pinch. And then there are kinda lighter bodies who are outside-inside, inside-outside types who could do some 3-technique or 4i, but also play outside the tackle as a 5-technique in an under front or man the edge in pass rush groupings.
Established vet-wise, the noteworthy “bigs” are: Myles Adams (listed as a NT, 290 pounds on the latest Seahawks roster but probably heavier at this point), Jarran Reed (listed as a DE, 306 pounds), and Bryan Mone (340 pounds and a pure nose, but unlikely to be ready for even half the season as recovering from his knee injury).
Given the lack of available large mass, a lot of base 3-4 personnel stock is being placed in rookie Cameron Young, who Carroll said in May weighed in at “320 something” and “looked exactly like what we were hoping to see.” The rookie appears to be Seattle’s Plan A as their pure nose tackle. Contrast this to Seattle’s roster last year, where they had Al Woods (330 pounds) and Poona Ford (a dense 310 pounds) in addition to a healthy Mone.
Naturally then, there is talk of the still-unsigned Shelby Harris returning to the Seahawks. Harris is not a “pure nose” but he would be another defensive lineman over 290 pounds. Seattle could also make a late veteran move at the position when cutdowns happen August 29th. The recent extension of Uchenna Nwosu and restructure of Quandre Diggs has also provoked blockbuster trade speculation.
The “smalls” include Dre’Mont Jones (281 pounds, significant free agency signing) and Mario Edwards Jr. (weighed in at 287 pounds, a late free agency add Carroll was “really pumped about.”)
Rookie-wise, 5th round pick Mike Morris is listed on the roster at 295 pounds but, given his 6-foot-6 frame and playing style, can be regarded as a rookie mirror for Jones’ skillset—and will be deployed in similar assignments.
The other element to unpack is what type of fronts Seattle is trying to major in this season. The roster’s serious lack of size at IDL is puzzling. It could be that this is the Seahawks returning to more nickel bear fronts, getting their guys into one-on-ones more often and also slanting via fire zone pressures, basically saying that lightness does not rule out starting.
Or it could be that the Seahawks are doubling down on their 2022 approach of running less nickel bear, more nickel “over g” fronts, seeing two interior defensive lineman play heavy on the guards and try to demand and hold up double teams. That would seemingly require more mass and so makes Seattle’s starting options look a lot more certain given their lack of size, unless they are going to try this approach with lighter body skillsets for quickness. Again, mixing in more line movements and pressures to alleviate this stress and accentuate the strengths would make sense.
Logically, the first option of more nickel bear usage seems obvious. But, as last season taught us, it is best not to take Seattle’s schematic direction for granted.
Center
For a consecutive offseason, the Seahawks are replacing last year’s starter at one of the more important, yet lesser valued, positions in the NFL: center.
Austin Blythe—successor to Ethan Pocic, who Seattle let walk—announced his retirement in March. Seattle quickly moved to sign former Detroit Lion Evan Brown. Brown started 24 games in Detroit, including 12 games at center in 2021. It wasn’t that Brown, who turns 27-years-old in September, wasn’t a success for the Lions; it was more that Detroit preferred Frank Ragnow.
Indeed, John Schneider told Wyman and Bob in March that Brown was “the guy that really stood out” in the Seahawks Front Office’s free agency planning meetings, back in December and January. “That Willie [Schneider, Executive Vice President] and DJ [Hord, Assistant Director of Pro Personnel] and Armani [Perez, Player Personnel Scout] and Nolan [Teasley, Assistant General Manager], those guys really focused on.”
To push Brown, signed to a small 1-year, $2.25million deal, Seattle drafted Michigan center Olu Oluwatimi in the 5th round of the 2023 draft. Oluwatimi brings an arm length (34-inch long arms) that the 32 ½-inch long Brown will never possess. Play-wise, Olu’s final season as a Wolverine saw him named college football center of the year. He also impressed in the advanced analytics, with Sports Info Solutions listing Oluwatimi as the leader in Total Points Rating Per Play among all draft-eligible centers.
“It's going to be a great spot to watch, it really will,” Carroll described of the center competition on June 1st. Yet, as the head coach added June 8th: “It's too early to really say anything about the competition of it.”
Training camp is where the pads come on for the offensive linemen too. Carroll shared at OTAs that “we're not going to set any timelines or anything like that,” but, at a certain point during this next period, Seattle’s 2023 week 1 starter will be decided. Oluwatimi spent OTA time with the first string offense and the Seahawks are likely to continue this approach into preseason games until/if Brown manages to win the battle. For the guy snapping the ball to the quarterback, this is as open as it’s ever been in Seattle.
Outside Linebacker #2
Recently extended Uchenna Nwosu is the EDGE 1 in Seattle. And, stats-wise, the second starting outside linebacker looks like an easy decision: Darrell Taylor matched Nwosu’s 2022 sack total with a 9.5 figure of his own. However, OLB #2 isn’t that simple.
Remember that Taylor was mainly a situational player for the Seahawks last season. In the 15 games Taylor fully participated in (excluding week 8 where he left early), Taylor played 70% or less of the snaps in 14 of those games, 60% or less of the snaps in 11 of those games, 50% or less of the snaps in 9 of those games, and 40% or less of the snaps in 5 of those games.
For context, Nwosu played 70% or more of the snaps in 15 of his 17 games, and 80% or more of the snaps in 9 of his 17 games.
These numbers show that Seattle couldn’t trust Taylor as an edge-setting run defender. As a result, Taylor would leave the field on early downs. Early in the year, the Seahawks signed Darryl Johnson off the street to set the edge opposite Nwosu. When Johnson injured his foot and was placed on Injured Reserve, Seattle returned to the unemployed edges, adding Bruce Irvin.
Irvin was 35-years-old when he started playing his third stint of Seahawks football. Yet he took over half the defensive snaps in 7 of his 11 games back in Seattle. The coaching staff’s playing time decisions with Taylor shows how they felt about his performances. A three-game stretch of 31% of snaps in week 13 at the Rams, 17% of snaps in week 14 versus the Panthers, and 27% of snaps in week 15 versus the 49ers is particularly striking.
Taylor’s chances of playing more only look slimmer. Boye Mafe started showing up more in place of Bruce Irvin and Taylor down the stretch of 2022. With Irvin gone, the sophomore Mafe, a 2022 2nd round pick, is going to be pushing heavily for more opportunities.
Further, Seattle spent another 2nd round pick on an outside linebacker in this past draft: their no.37 overall selection, Auburn’s Derick Hall. Hall’s tape is full of violent edge-setting and the 22-year-old should be able to contribute in whatever situation the Seahawks require, run or pass.
Seattle also has 2022 4th round pick Tyreke Smith as a sneaky candidate. Smith was effectively injury redshirted last season. Yet he was the outside linebacker defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt chose to highlight in late May.
“A guy that's a very talented rusher from what he's shown, but obviously hasn't done a lot on the practice field but the early stuff from our drill work and OTAs, has been Tyreke Smith,” Hurtt said.
“You know he's a very skilled guy with his hands. Fluid hips and feet. So it'll be interesting to see, you know, how does he continue? As he continues to progress.”
I’m looking forward to another season analyzing the Seahawks. I have been working on a project that I am excited to release soon. Call it Seahawks 2022 Defensive Autopsy/Lessons for 2023/Can This Go On?!
Good to be back,
Matty
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