5 takeaways from Boye Mafe's appearance on Green Light

Why Boye Mafe was so "pissed off" that people called the Seahawks a rebuilding team: Seaside Joe 1949

Any evaluation of an NFL player without watching, listening, or conducting interviews about him is always going to be incomplete. That’s one of the upsides of the podcast generation, fans get to hear players talk about themselves and football without being in a work environment. Sometimes they’re even in their own homes.

Imagine talking about work…while you’re at work…to a news team that’s dedicated to covering what’s happening at your job.

The left side of my digestive system just had an aneurysm from even thinking about having to do that.

One of the thousands of advantages that former NFL players with podcasts have over other podcasters is that players seem to prefer to talk about football with other football players. One such podcaster who went through over a decade of school (college and the NFL) just to get his dream job of hosting a podcast is Chris Long. As a former edge rusher, Long likes speaking to other edge rushers and once such example today is Boye Mafe.

I don’t get to hear Mafe talk about football that often, especially not outside of work, so this show is a unique chance to get to know one of the Seahawks most important seeds for a defense that has failed to cover the grass.

These are 5 takeaways, in case you do not have the time to watch:

Models game after Frank Clark (9:28)

Long heard that Mafe models his game after Carl Lawson, Frank Clark, and Brian Burns and asked “What do you take from each of those guys?”

Obviously, Frank has the moves and his quickness and I like to look at people, you know, because everyone is different—there’s big strong guys who, they’re power all day, and there’s the finess guys that are doing finess moves, like cross chop, swipe, all around, and I felt as if who I am as a player and who I play, I was trying to take a mix of all that.

Having Frank in the building after watching him so long, it was amazing to see his mindset and how he goes about it. He sets up moves, he’ll be like ‘Look, I know we got a six play drive, so my first two rushes I’m throwing the fast ball to see what he does. Then when it’s third and eight, now let me throw my switch and up and he’s not going to understand, he’s gonna be confused why I didn’t do that other move.”

I had forgotten that Frank Clark played six game with the Seahawks last season. He did not get to add to his career sack total unfortunately, but Clark may have done something better by sharing insights with Mafe.

Another player that Mafe said he has learned a lot from was Bruce Irvin, also known as “2022’s Frank Clark”.

Mafe thinks Mike Macdonald understands football (14:26)

Phew!

Chris Long asks what it was like to get destroyed by the Ravens (my words) and whether he started watching Baltimore’s defense that day to see what they were doing and to now know what it’s like to have Macdonald as a coach.

“It’s like, le me see what’s going on like you know what I’m saying? Let me see what these guys are doing because this is making no sense, especially with the offense we have and the tools we have, so for them to be able to do that I was like it has to be something. Now being on the other side of it, it makes a LOT more sense. I’m looking behind the curtain…I see how it’s flowing and the essence of it. He’s one of those people, Xs and Os, he understands it really well. He understand football really well, like how to utilize people and how to move people.”

It’s so crazy to think that six weeks ago, Mike Macdonald was just an average, everyday 13-year-old in the school band and then all of a sudden one day he gets crushed by a falling goalpost and somehow has the entire history of football knowledge in his brain (you know like when people get hit in the head and can start speaking Cantonese out of nowhere?) and now he’s the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks.

If I am getting this confused with the screenplay I’m writing, please don’t steal it!

I am just making a joke about something else, not making fun of Mafe.

Learned how to do offseason from Quinton Jefferson (27:50)

Mafe just got back from vacation, so it’s like he doesn’t even care about football at all.

“My first year I was there with Quinton Jefferson, guys that have been around and they were telling me, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint”. They said “You’re not getting ready for the season right now, you’re getting ready for the season in July.” So I had to understand that it’s like a crescendo, you’re not gonna run out the gates “ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH!” You got to crescendo into it because you’ll burn out once you get to the season. My first offseason, I hit it hard, I realized later in the year that I was like, when it’s Week 10 or 12, that’s where your body, you’re feeling it. You’re really feeling it at that point. My biggest thing was my recovery and changing my mindset with it, you have to take time away and give yourself mental clarity, because when you’re doing this job you’re thinking about it all the time.”

This makes it sound to me like Boye Mafe was not happy with his performances after Week 10. Which makes sense: From Week 1-Week 10, Mafe had seven sacks. From Week 11-18, he had two sacks and both came against the Titans.

I enjoy hearing players say that they think about football all the time, because me too.

Hated being called a ‘rebuild’ in 2022 (21:28)

One of the things that Mafe says he really did not like going into his rookie year was people saying that the Seahawks were “rebuilding” because Seattle traded Russell Wilson and were going to be starting either Geno Smith or Drew Lock. Long asks Mafe about playing against Wilson in Week 1 of his rookie season and the feeling of getting the win over a team that people said were more focused on “winning now” than the Seahawks according to that offseason’s narrative.

“One of the things that pissed me off is they kept saying Seattle’s on a rebuild, Seattle’s on a rebuild. I kept looking around like, “So you’re saying we don’t have talented players?” They thought we weren’t a team to take serious. That was my first NFL game so I walked in and was like “This is what the league is like? Okay.”

In the MLB and the NBA teams can rebuild because they can actually strip all of their parts for future assets and are literally only concerned with winning after three or four or five seasons of ineptitude. That just doesn’t work in the NFL. There is no minor leagues, there aren’t drafts in 2028 that general managers and coaches can plan for because they probably won’t be around in 2028. The NFL moves too fast. So at best, I think teams will, if not calling it “tanking”, set aside winning as the priority for one year and plan to survive with their dignity.

I’d look at Zac Taylor’s first two years with the Bengals like that. Cincinnati went 2-14 and 4-11-1 in Taylor’s first two seasons, but knew that by losing the most games in 2019 that they would get a high draft pick and they used that on Joe Burrow. Once they had Burrow and Taylor, the Bengals felt like they could give the head coach a little more slack, especially since Burrow tore his ACL. Then when they added Ja’Marr Chase in 2021, the Bengals made the Super Bowl.

That’s about as far as I think a rebuild can do. Any team that’s been terrible for longer than 5, 10, 25 years (Hey Cleveland), that’s not rebuilding once. That’s rebuilding constantly.

So the 2022 Seahawks were not necessarily rebuilding, but I think that even the people in the building had to be a little surprised that Seattle actually improved the year after trading Russell Wilson. Firing Pete is probably a bigger sign of a reset than trading Wilson, but the Seahawks could still win more than eight games again.

Don’t forget to check SEA-MORE Comments in the comments after every article! I’ll keep the conversation going there, giving recommendations, asking questions, and meeting other Seasiders:

2022 draft class wants to get back to the playoffs

The Seahawks drafted Charles Cross, Ken Walker, Boye Mafe, Abe Lucas, and Riq Woolen in 2022, and others, and they’ve expected good things from themselves even before their first practice.

“The guys that came in my class, and even from day one we all remember it like it was yesterday. We all came in and we were sitting in the locker room talking because they bring the rookies in separate…We sat there and we were like let’s go chase this, like we all were hungry and especially that first year. We got the first taste of the playoffs, it was like Okay if this is what we got to do to be here, let’s double down. Seeing the small things that people do outside of practice and guys you know are “solidified guys” that take their job even more serious than ever, guys really buy into it. We have competitive edge like nobody, I promise you.”

The Seahawks will want to be known as the most competitive team, even without Pete Carroll, and that’s coming from people on the Seahawks!