Tag: Shaquill Griffin

The Seattle Seahawks came into the 2019 season with very few remaining remnants of the Legion of Boom. Earl Thomas was in Baltimore. Richard Sherman was in San Francisco. Kam Chancellor and Cliff Avril were retired. Michael Bennett was in Foxboro on his way to Dallas. Outside of linebackers Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright, there wasn’t much left of a defense that set the pace for the modern era of professional football, leading the NFL in scoring defense every season from 2012 through 2015.

In the place of those former stalwarts, head coach Pete Carroll and defensive coordinator Ken Norton, Jr. had a lot of uncertainty. Young cornerbacks Shaquill Griffin and Tre Flowers looked to be the outside starters. With former slot star Justin Coleman off to Detroit with a rich free-agent contract, Carroll and Norton went decidedly old-school with a base three-linebacker set most of the time, with Mychal Kendricks adding his talents to the Wagner/Wright battery. Seattle picked up ex-Lions pass-rusher Ezekiel Ansah on a one-year, $9 million deal, as Ansah was coming off a shoulder injury that limited him to seven games and two starts for Detroit in 2018. Seattle also selected TCU defensive end L.J. Collier in the first round of the 2019 draft — a move that was met with quite a few raised eyebrows.

The safety position was the most impacted to start the season. There is no way to replace a player of Earl Thomas’ talents, so Seattle tried to do it in the aggregate. Veteran Bradley McDougald was the one reliable element, but McDougal isn’t a deep post safety at this point in his career. He played mostly box safety in Seattle’s preferred iterations of Cover-1 and Cover-3, though he would move back in Cover-2 looks. Seattle tried to work with youngsters like Delano Hill, Tedric Thompson, and Marquise Blair in the deep third, but it really wasn’t working out.

Through the first nine weeks of the season, Seattle ranked 21st in Football Outsiders’ opponent-adjusted defensive DVOA against the pass, and 27th overall. The Seahawks hit the half-season mark at 6-2, primarily because Russell Wilson was putting together his best season to date in what’s already been a remarkable career.

Carroll and general manager John Schneider knew more was required on the defensive side of the ball if their team was to be a credible postseason contender, and they knew that before the 2019 campaign started. So, they pulled off two season-altering trades for very little in return. In early September, they offloaded pass-rushers Barkevious Mingo and Jacob Martin and a 2020 third-round pick to the Texans for 2014 first overall pick Jadeveon Clowney, an edge weapon with virtually unlimited potential but inconsistent production through his first five NFL seasons. The Texans liked to play Clowney in a “spinner” role, as opposed to letting him pin his ears back from the end of the defensive line and unleash hell upon enemy quarterbacks. It became clear that Carroll’s coaching staff would use Clowney in a more traditional — and successful — way.

But the deal that really turned Seattle’s defense around barely made a blip on the national radar. On October 23, Seattle traded a 2020 fifth-round pick to the Lions for safety Quandre Diggs and a 2021 seventh-rounder.

It took a bit of time for Clowney and Diggs to get their feet under them, they’ve each made major differences in a defense that has become one of the NFL’s best. Since Week 10, Seattle has raised its profile to fourth in pass defense DVOA, and fourth in defensive DVOA, behind only the 49ers, Steelers, and Ravens.

Clowney’s value was most obvious in Seattle’s most important win of the season to date — the 27-24 Week 10 overtime win over the 49ers. Coming into that game, Seattle’s defense had put up just 14 sacks, with 17 quarterback hits and 107 quarterback hurries. Seattle amassed five sacks, four quarterback hits, and 14 quarterback hurries against Kyle Shanahan’s offense, and Clowney — who had been relatively quiet to that point — had one sack, all four of Seattle’s quarterback hits, and six of the team’s 14 hurries. In addition, he was at least partially responsible for the sacks picked up by teammates Al Woods and Quinton Jefferson.

Clowney has been limited by a core muscle injury since then, missing Seattle’s Week 12 win over the Eagles, though he did return for Sunday’s win over the Vikings, adding one quarterback hit and one quarterback hurry. But while Clowney was down, Ansah got healthier and decided to heat up, with 1.5 sacks and three quarterback hurries against Philadelphia, and three quarterback hits against the Vikings.

Diggs’ effect on the secondary, it could be argued, has been even more transformative than Clowney’s on the defensive line.