Seahawks’ Bevell: With Harvin, expect new wrinkles

By Brent Stecker

Marshawn Lynch. Russell Wilson. Zach Miller. Golden Tate. Doug Baldwin. And now Percy Harvin.

Seahawks offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell will have a bevy of weapons at his disposal during the 2013 season, and the recent addition of explosive wide receiver Harvin from the Vikings means he can add all kinds of wrinkles to the team’s offense.

“We should be a matchup nightmare,” Bevell told Bob Stelton and Dave Wyman on Wednesday. “The problem is right now we only have one ball.”

Bevell is plenty familiar with Harvin’s talent, having been his offensive coordinator in Minnesota during Harvin’s first two seasons in 2009 and 2010.

“He’s an exciting player. Dynamic’s a good word. Explosive,” Bevell said. “He can really hit the house at any point from any spot on the field. You can use him all over the place – you can use him in the slot, he could be a standalone receiver outside, and you can also just hand him the ball and let him be a runner as well.”

Though Harvin has a reputation for being tough to deal with, Bevell said that was never the case with him.

“My interaction with him – and I told coach (Pete Carroll) the same thing – I’ve never had one problem, one issue with Percy. He and I got along really well,” Bevell said. “Percy’s a highly competitive guy. He wants to win. We want those guys that are gonna compete hard. … I don’t expect it to be a problem, as far as how hard he works and the attitude that he’s gonna bring. That hasn’t been an issue.”

And the upside for the Seahawks’ offense is exponential.

“It opens up just so many things that we’ll have the capability of doing,” Bevell said. “We’ll be able to play off some of the things we did last year. I think this gives us some some things that we can go off of what we did last year.”

That doesn’t mean the team will abandon it’s run-first mentality, which is led by bruising running back Lynch and crafty quarterback Wilson running the read-option. But it could help the Seahawks’ ability to make teams pay for concentrating too much on their running game.

“We still have a strong philosophy in believing in the run game, so that’s where we’re gonna start,” Bevell said. “But because of our run game we were able to be explosive later in the year off of our play-actions and off of our movement game. We’d like to pick up where we left off and pick up with the explosiveness.

“Just because you run the ball doesn’t mean that you can’t be explosive, and I think we were able to prove that as the season went on.”