Brock and Salk: Can the Seahawks’ defense be called elite?

Dec 4, 2024, 1:03 PM | Updated: 9:39 pm

Julian Love (20) and Devon Witherspoon (21) of the Seattle Seahawks react against the Jets on Sunday. (Elsa/Getty Images)

(Elsa/Getty Images)

BY CAMERON VAN TIL

Seattle Sports

After a rocky first half of the season, the Seattle Seahawks’ defense has turned a corner under new head coach Mike Macdonald.

Three things NFL analyst says are making Seahawks’ D dominant

The Seahawks have held four straight opponents to 17 offensive points or fewer in regulation, while also limiting each of those four opponents to fewer than 300 total yards in regulation.

The turnaround began in Week 9, when Seattle’s defense gave up just 13 points in regulation of an overtime loss to the Los Angeles Rams. Then after a bye week, the Seahawks rattled off three straight wins and surged atop the NFC West by holding the San Francisco 49ers to 17 points, the Arizona Cardinals to a season-low six points and the New York Jets to just 14 offensive points.

“You’re kind of starting to smell it, right?” former NFL quarterback Brock Huard said Monday on Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk. “Some of that aroma of like, ‘I know that smell.'”

The smell Huard was referring to is that of an elite defense. He and the rest of the Pacific Northwest certainly know what that looks like, having watched the famed Legion of Boom compile one of the best defensive runs in NFL history during the 2010s.

That begs the question: Do these Seahawks have an elite defense? Four games is still a small sample size, but Huard and co-host Mike Salk agreed it’s worth at least asking the question.

“If you give up 17 points a game in the NFL, guess what you are? Elite. You’re elite,” Huard said. “You give up 84 yards (per game) on the ground? That’s pretty darn elite.”

“And these four games, you didn’t do it against Jacoby Brissett or Bo Nix in his third start or a third-string QB,” he added. “These four weeks have been against Matthew Stafford, Brock Purdy, a red-hot Kyler Murray and Aaron Rodgers. You’ve done it against legit dudes.”

Salk echoed that sentiment.

“It’s not doing it against Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and a couple other guys, but it’s certainly the next tier after that, right?” Salk said. “You’re doing it against real quality NFL quarterbacks. Stafford and Rodgers are both probably past their best years, but (at least) in Stafford’s case, he’s certainly (still) capable of winning games. Kyler Murray and Brock Purdy have both played really well this year, and you really embarrassed both of them.

“So I’m not afraid to at least ask the question, and (I’d) probably answer it with an ‘I think so.’ This team looks like they’ve got an elite defense. I don’t know that they’re a perfect defense. I think there’s still ways they can get better. But at all three levels, they’re playing really good football.”

There’s always a danger in extrapolating a small sample of games over an entire season. But if the Seahawks continue to play at or near this level defensively, they indeed would be among the best defenses in the NFL.

Over their past four games, the Seahawks’ defense has allowed just 14 points per contest. Extrapolated over the entire season, that would rank No. 1 in the league – ahead of the league-leading Los Angeles Chargers’ 15.7 points allowed per game.

Over their past four games, the Seahawks have surrendered just 1.30 points per possession. That also would rank No. 1 in the league over the entire season – ahead of the Chargers’ 1.44 points allowed per drive.

And over their past four games, the Seahawks have allowed just 299.8 total yards per game and 84.3 rushing yards per game. Both of those marks would rank No. 3 in the league over the entire season.

“It’s hard, because the stats for the whole season certainly don’t show elite,” Salk said. “But the stats for the last four weeks, they kind of do, right?

“I don’t know. Maybe ‘elite’ is too far,” he added. “Fine. OK. (But) I’m willing to ask the question, and I’m willing to say, ‘I think so.’ I’m not quite willing to say this is an elite defense quite yet. But I’m not that far away from it, and neither are they.”

Listen to the full conversation on Brock and Salk at this link or in the audio player near the top of this story. Tune in to Brock and Salk weekdays from 6 to 10 a.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.