QB Tarvaris Jackson comfortable with no-huddle offense

By Liz Mathews

Looking ahead to Sunday, Seahawks quarterback Tarvaris Jackson has his eye on the Falcons’ defense.

“Those guys do a lot of different things,” Jackson said before practice on Thursday. “You can’t really get a beat on exactly what they’re doing on every play. They try to mix it up. They get after the quarterback. They bring a lot of blitzes so you’ve got to be prepared for it.

“But they also mix it up sometimes with coverages so you’ve got to basically be prepared for both.”

And speaking of mixing things up, Jackson and the Seahawks have some plans of their own — including running more of the no-huddle offense.

“Yeah, you can kind of catch them off-guard,” Jackson said. “For whatever reason, defenses are more vanilla. They’re not doing as much when you go no-huddle because they’ve got to communicate as well. Our communicating is probably a little bit better, as far as the offense in no-huddle goes. So we can set the tempo.”

Seahawks offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell said on Wednesday that he likes the change of pace option as well, although he plans to use it strategically.

“I’d say there’s a chance you’ll see more of it but it’s something that will be determined by game plan, by game, by opponent and seeing if it’s something that will help us,” Bevell said. “Then there’s also times when there may be something to it because you’re not doing much and you want to change the tempo.

“So there are a lot of different scenarios when you’d go to it.”

Bevell explained that while the no-huddle seems to simplify things for the offense on the field, it has its disadvantages as well — namely giving the defense very little breathing room on the sidelines.

“It can go the other way on you too,” Bevell said. “You can run three plays in 40 seconds and now you’ve put your defense back out there so you need to be successful with it as well.”

News and notes

The following players did NOT practice on Thursday:

Guard Robert Gallery (OUT – groin)

Safety Kam Chancellor (quadriceps)

Cornerback Byron Maxwell (ankle)

Fullback Michael Robinson, tackle Jarriel King, and linebacker Matt McCoy were full participants on Thursday.