It’s been a long NFL season, but the postseason is finally here. Now, you probably didn’t get to study the entire playoff field in-depth during the regular season. No worries. We’ve put together guides that will help you become an instant expert on all 12 teams making up the field.
These guides will tell you how each team uses its personnel on both sides of the ball, what its strategic tendencies are and how efficient the team is based on several advanced metrics.
In this guide, we’ll be looking at the Seahawks, who had to settle for the fifth seed in the NFC after a disappointing loss to the 49ers in Week 17. Let’s get to know them…
[Or find the strategy guide for another team here.]
SEAHAWKS OFFENSE
The Seahawks are known as a run-first team, but no team in the field plays as many pass-catchers. The Seahawks base out of three-receiver sets but will routinely go into four-receiver sets when they actually let Russell Wilson cook. Arizona was the only team that played more 10 personnel during the regular season.
Offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer gets a lot of criticism for his run-pass balance (and rightfully so) but he’s done a good job of working around Seattle’s offensive line, which isn’t very good. When the Seahawks want to take a shot downfield, they’ll call play-action –which slows down the pass rush — and get Wilson out of the pocket. In the drop-back passing game, Wilson will get the ball out of his hands as quickly as possible.
The Seahawks are running more man-blocking concepts than they were before Schottenheimer took over the offense, but this is still primarily a zone-blocking run game. There haven’t been a lot of explosive plays, but the run game has consistently kept the offense ahead of the chains. The Seahawks still run the ball too much, but at least they’ve done it from spread sets, which has boosted their efficiency.
SEAHAWKS DEFENSE
The Seahawks defense is a throwback … and that’s not necessarily a good thing. Pete Carroll, in an effort to get what he thinks are his best 11 players on the field at once, plays with base personnel (4 DL, 3 LB, 4 DB) more than any other team by a WIDE margin. No other team in the field plays base more than 26% of the time.
The Seahawks defense is essentially the one you grew accustomed to during the Legion of Boom era. Seattle is still playing a lot of zone coverages with a single safety in the deep middle. The Seahawks are blitzing at about a league-average rate, but when they do so, they’ll almost always play zone coverage behind the blitz. Seattle has rarely left its corners on their own with no safety help.
It hasn’t been a good year for Carroll’s defense. The midseason acquisition of safety Quadre Diggs has helped … some. But the Seahawks are playing too much base defense. While Jedeveon Clowney has consistently beaten his blocker it hasn’t turned into sacks and he isn’t getting any help from the rest of the rush.
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