The Seattle Seahawks should be pretty tough in coverage on the back end of their defense this season. No NFL team is deeper at the safety position and they’ve added another potential superstar at corneback with top-five overall pick Devon Witherspoon. However, the season will hinge on how much this team’s new-look defensive front-seven performs compared to last year.
While it’s way too early to make any kind of definitive judgement, things don’t look good, at least on paper. Arif Hasan at Pro Football Network ranked all 32 defensive units around the NFL and the Seahawks came in at No. 23 on the list. Here’s what he said about this unit.
“The Seahawks ranked 26th in the NFL defensively last year and don’t project to change all that much despite a fifth-overall investment at cornerback. While that should improve the quality of play there, it’s not as if cornerback was the issue for Seattle last year. The model might undercount Jamal Adams’ return to play, but it knows that there isn’t much in the way of pass rush or interior talent.”
The Seahawks have to hope he’s wrong. On paper Uchenna Nwosu is the only sure thing for the edge rush rotation, but if two or three other outside linebackers can contribute meaningfully this defense will likely outrank this projection.
The real key here is how well they defend the run. While Al Woods, Shelby Harris and Poona Ford got a lot of the blame for 2022’s disaster, the real issues were arguably coaching-related. If they clean that part of the equation up this could even be a top-10 defense. If.