The problems Mark Schlereth sees in Seahawks’ run defense

After a brutal stretch of three losses over the course of 11 days, the Seattle Seahawks are in the midst of a welcomed 10-day window between games.

The roles health, personnel play in Seattle Seahawks’ issues vs run

The Seahawks resume game action for the first time in over a week on Sunday when they travel to face the Atlanta Falcons.

One thing Seattle will have undoubtedly been working on heading into the matchup with the Falcons is its run defense. The Seahawks are coming off allowing 228 rushing yards against the San Francisco 49ers on Thursday Night Football, and they’ve allowed the sixth-most rushing yards per game to opponents this season.

It’s a familiar problem for the team, which ranked in the bottom three against the run the past three seasons. But it’s coming with Seattle running a new defense and having plenty of new personnel.

So why are the Seahawks struggling against the run once again? Longtime NFL insider and three-time Super Bowl champion Mark Schlereth shared his thoughts Tuesday during his weekly conversation with Wyman and Bob.

“It always comes down to the same stuff. It’s gap assignment, being gap sound and being in your assigned gap,” said Schlereth, who is an NFL on FOX analyst and host of Breakfast Ball on FS1. “But really once you defeat the block in your assigned gap, it’s your ability to disengage and get down the line and make a play.”

While Schlereth makes it sound relatively simple, he explained that it isn’t.

“What ends up happening is (the defender gets) shoved (by an offensive player),” Schlereth said. “… You’re pinching hard and you’re moving and you’re doing those things and you just get displaced by foot to a foot and a half, and what that does is all of a sudden the linebacker gets jammed and caught in there and then the cutback lanes come and the next thing you know, those 2-3 yard gains become 10-, 12-, 20-yard gains.

“So I don’t think people have an appreciation for how difficult that is to maintain your leverage, to maintain your spot,” he continued. “… When you’re stacking a deep offensive lineman and then all of a sudden you peak and you’re trying to locate the ball and just by peaking you get yourself out of spot or out of a leverage position, and the next thing you know you get rolled up on. Those are the little things that happen to teams that don’t defend the run well, and just the little things like that become huge running plays.”

Giving up those longer runs has been one of the challenges facing the Seahawks’ defense. The unit has allowed seven runs of 20 or more yards, which is only one shy of the most in the NFL.

The 49ers iced last Thursday’s game with one of the long runs Schlereth talked about when third-string running back Isaac Guerendo ripped off a 76-yard run immediately after the Seahawks cut their deficit to one score late in the fourth quarter.

“That just completely skews some of that that run game. I’m not saying they didn’t run the ball well before that, but that definitely skews (it),” Schlereth said.

Listen to the full conversation at this link. NFL insider Mark Schlereth joins Wyman and Bob Tuesdays at 4 p.m. to discuss the Seattle Seahawks and the rest of the NFL. Tune in to Wyman and Bob weekdays from 2-6 p.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.

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