How Seahawks are giving reasons to be confident in defense

For more than half of a year now, the Seattle Seahawks and their fans have been eagerly anticipating the chance to see exactly how new head coach Mike Macdonald’s vaunted defensive scheme will translate in the Pacific Northwest.

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After being a dominant defensive force for many of the early years of the Pete Carroll era, Seattle has slid to the back of the pack in recent seasons. That led to the hiring of first-time head coach Macdonald, who led the best defense in the NFL last season as the coordinator for the Baltimore Ravens.

The first full vision of a new-look Seahawks defense won’t come until Sept. 8 when they open the regular season against the Denver Broncos. However, that doesn’t mean they haven’t shown glimpses of what is in store through many practices and, more recently, a pair of preseason contests.

Seattle Sports’ Bump and Stacy have been watching closely in the months leading up to the 2024 season, and they’re very encouraged by what they’ve seen from Macdonald and the Hawks thus far. On Monday, they explained why their confidence is growing in Seattle’s defensive unit.

Using players in different ways

One of the aspects that stood out about the defense under Carroll was its overall simplicity. Whether it was the 4-3 or 3-4 editions of his defense, the Seahawks could be counted on to run a fairly barebones, cover-three scheme. And it worked for many years with the famed Legion of Boom era leading to many teams around the league attempting to emulate what Carroll was doing in Seattle.

Then, the league figured it out, and the Seahawks’ defensive struggles ensued. That was particularly evident the past two seasons as they ranked last in the league at defending the run both times.

Macdonald’s system brings a big change with plenty of movement and disguises to help slow down the opposing offenses. Former NFL wide receiver Michael Bumpus noticed the way the Seahawks have used their pass rushers during the preseason shows some of that change.

“He’s doing some different things, man,” Bumpus said. “It’s not like this hasn’t been done before, but we haven’t seen it with this team. What he’s doing is he’s putting all of them (pass rushers) out there at the same time.”

Bumpus went on to explain how a typical pass rush will often feature two edge rushers, often in an upright stance, on the outside and two defensive linemen with a hand on the ground on the inside. However, Macdonald has shown looks of three edge rushers in upright stances – with one playing inside – and only one lineman with his hand on the ground inside.

D Hall and Boye got him 😤 pic.twitter.com/52svfa5klh

— Seattle Seahawks (@Seahawks) August 17, 2024

“So two of these guys are standing up on the left side or on the right side – just opposite the other guy with his hand in the dirt – and they’re going after these guys,” Bumpus said. “I’ve seen Boye Mafe be inside in kind of stand up three-tech with (Darrell Taylor) on the outside, and then (another edge rusher) on the other side and you’ll have like a Leonard Williams or a Byron Murphy or a (Jarran) Reed with their hand in the dirt. So what that tells me is that he’s looking at these guys and saying I’m going to use them in as many ways as possible…

“I think he’s starting to look at these guys and say there are some games that I can play with them as far as alignment and stunts and execution,” Bumpus continued. “It is easier to stunt those two guys who are standing up than it is for one guy (with his) hand in the dirt and the other guy in a two-point (stance) standing up. You can do it and it can be effective, but what I’m seeing is Macdonald look at the attributes of these players and say they can do more than just what the profile of an edge rusher says. They can come inside and take on a guard and a tackle or occupy them and allow another guy to get open.”

Seattle Seahawks’ deep secondary

The Seahawks have some strong returning pieces in their secondary between corners Devon Witherspoon, Riq Woolen and Tre Brown and safety Julian Love. But Seattle also lost a couple of notable players in free agency in safeties Quandre Diggs and Jamal Adams.

Through weeks of training camp and two preseason games, co-host Stacy Rost feels the secondary has shown that it’s deeper than it seemed.

“I still have concerns about inside linebacker, but there’s more depth than I thought at corner and at safety with this defensive back group,” Rost said. “I didn’t think that they’d be worse off with Jamal Adams departing. He was not frequently healthy. I did have some concerns about Quandre departing, because he was still really productive, just expensive.

“But I really like the depth. They’re gonna end up moving on from either one of their drafted corners or a really solid backup safety, someone that is really promising.”

A diving pick by @tyokada ‼️ pic.twitter.com/dhQQqOYXfb

— Seattle Seahawks (@Seahawks) August 18, 2024

Bumpus pointed out that having to make decisions like those isn’t a bad thing.

“The DB room is ridiculous right now,” Bumpus said. “… They can sacrifice a guy in the defensive backfield to add some depth to their defensive line or keep their depth with the D-line and edge rushers, because they’re so deep at the in the DB room already. So that’s a good problem to have.

“When you cut somebody who you know can play on this team, that means you’re deep as heck. Now you can cut them and try to get them on the practice squad, but the guys that they have in that DB room are so good, ain’t nobody making that practice squad.”

Execution of scheme

With Macdonald, defensive coordinator Aden Durde and plenty of other new faces on the coaching staff, it could be expected that the Seahawks will have some growing pains in their new defensive scheme. Rost remembered just how difficult of a transition the Seahawks had going from a 4-3 front to a 3-4 under Carroll.

“It felt like there was a learning curve and it’s like, ‘Oh, when you do something new, sometimes it takes a minute to figure it out,'” she said.

But both Rost and Bumpus don’t feel their seeing the same sort of learning curve for the defense under Macdonald.

“It just seems tight and it seems like everyone is where they’re supposed to be,” Bumpus said. “You still gotta make plays, but that’s a great place to start.”

Those are signs of good communication from the coaching staff, according the Bumpus.

“That tells me that the process of learning is really sticking with these guys from the (starters) all the way down to the (backups),” Bumpus said.

Listen to the full conversation at this link or in the audio player near the top of this story. Tune in to Bump and Stacy weekdays from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.

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