Huard: The common theme for Seahawks’ defensive signings

Every Thursday, Seattle Seahawks general manager and president of football operations John Schneider joins Seattle Sports’ Wyman and Bob for wide-ranging interviews about the offseason leading up to the NFL Draft.

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Former NFL quarterback Brock Huard, who hosts Brock and Salk on Seattle Sports, is one of many who tunes in to hear Schneider every single week, and over the last few weeks, what Schneider has said about many of the Seahawks’ defensive signings in free agency has stood out to Huard.

“I think the last three weeks … we’ve heard the term of ‘He’s a green dot guy. Yep, he’s a green dot guy,'” Huard said. In particular, Schneider has said that about safety Rayshawn Jenkins as well as linebackers Tyrel Dodson and Jerome Baker.

The “green dot” is the player who wears a helmet that has a speaker inside where they get play calls from the team’s coordinator and then relay that to teammates on the field. On offense, that’s always the quarterback. On defense, it can vary, but it’s typically a linebacker, usually the middle or MIKE linebacker.

This week, Schneider said that Dodson will be a MIKE linebacker while Baker is slotted as a WILL or weakside linebacker.

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“Oftentimes, like (former Seahawks linebacker) Bobby Wagner, it’s just the middle linebacker, the quarterback of the defense,” Huard said. “And other times it can be other linebackers, it can be Rayshawn Jenkins, the safety from Jacksonville, it can be different players. And you’ve heard John talk about that with a number of the players they’ve signed.”

That stands out to Huard in a major way.

“What that speaks to me is in the first year of a new system, you’d better have dudes that understand ball,” he said. “You’d better have guys also in (new head coach) Mike Macdonald’s system – it may be a little different than the previous regime of 14 years – that can understand the ‘why,’ understand the details, understand route combinations and everything that goes into playing elite defense and better defense rather than just playing coverages.

“That has resonated with me and and maybe a little bit of an indicator as well of what we’re gonna see in this draft a month from now. You’re gonna have to have high football IQ, high football-acumen guys, especially on the defensive side of the ball with a new, young energetic staff bringing a lot of new game.”

Listen to the full second hour of Friday’s Brock & Salk at this link or in the player near the top of this post. And catch John Schneider every Thursday with Wyman & Bob.

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