A key play showed a difference in Seahawks’ new defense

There was a particular play in the Seattle Seahawks’ preseason opener last Saturday that highlighted the versatility and attention to detail in new head coach Mike Macdonald’s cutting-edge defensive scheme.

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Defensive end Mike Morris, a 2023 fifth-round pick out of Michigan, lined up over the left edge of the defensive front, standing nearly face to face with Los Angeles Chargers tight end Stone Smartt. As the ball was snapped, Morris started dropping back into zone coverage.

After taking one or two steps back, Morris recognized that Smartt was running a quick out route to the flat. With incredible athleticism for a player of his size, the 6-foot-6, 295-pound Morris flipped his hips like he was a cornerback, ran alongside Smartt in tight coverage and reached his right hand out to break up the pass for an incompletion.

While dropping defensive linemen into coverage isn’t necessarily a new thing for the Seahawks, they often struggled to do so effectively in recent years. Earlier this week, former NFL quarterback Brock Huard explained why the strategy should be more effective in Macdonald’s defense.

“This is the difference between dropping into space and spot covering, versus what this team is going to do, which is match cover,” Huard said Monday on Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk. “(Instead of) a lot of your scheme being getting to landmarks and getting to spots, … (Macdonald’s defense is) going to cover the people within these zones. We’re gonna match up with them.

“How many times did we see (in recent years) when you drop a defensive lineman out and they just drop back into space and (they had) no concept of what could be coming? There was an extra body back there, but (the quarterback) is just throwing past your ear or throwing right around you.”

Former NFL wide receiver Michael Bumpus shared a similar perspective while discussing that same play during Friday’s edition of Four Down Territory on Seattle Sports’ Bump and Stacy.

“Last year, (former Seahawks defensive coordinator) Clint Hurtt experimented with defensive lineman dropping into coverage,” Bumpus said. “We were watching them drop into coverage and it looks like they’re just dropping into space. … (Morris) wasn’t just running to to space looking at the quarterback and seeing what’s happening. He’s doing it all — he’s running to space, looking at the quarterback, filling the tight end that was in the flat right there, playing the football. So that tells me they’re coached up differently.

“I’ve seen (former Seahawks defensive tackle) Poona Ford try to get out there and (current Seahawks defensive tackle) Jarran Reed try to get out there last year and they looked lost,” he added. “They felt like they didn’t belong. … I watched the way Mike Morris dropped into space and I go, that young man is coached up. So, another example of Mike Macdonald doing some of the things that we saw last year, but more effectively simply because he’s coaching him up better.”

Huard thinks that play was emblematic of the detailed-oriented nature of Macdonald’s scheme.

“If there was like almost one play that defines so much of the detailed difference, that may very well have been it,” Huard said. “… I love that play.”

Listen to full conversation on Brock and Salk at this link or in the audio player near the top of this story. Hear the full Four Down Territory segment on Bump and Stacy at this link or in the audio player near the middle of this story.

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