Coby Bryant breaks down Super Bowl film of Seahawks suffocating Drake Maye
The Xs and Os behind a dominant championship performance by Seattle's defense
Former Seahawks safety Coby Bryant made an appearance on Film Watchers on Tuesday, a unique and rare opportunity to hear an active NFL player go over X’s and O’s from not just any game, but Seattle’s 29-13 Super Bowl win over the Patriots.
Bryant may now be a safety in Dennis Allen’s Chicago Bears defense instead of re-signing with the Seahawks, but he’ll always have a ton of respect for what Mike Macdonald did for him and the rest of the team last season.
“He’s elite, man. A ton of respect for him. Just to the way he perfects his craft and the confidence that he does have to be able to put, you know, the Seahawks in such a great situation to make plays.”
Many props to Film Watchers for the get and we thank him for talking directly to one of the sources for how the Seahawks held “almost-MVP” Drake Maye to 27-of-43 passing with 295 yards, 2 TD, 2 INT, and 6 sacks with a lost fumble. Film Watchers posted his own Super Bowl defense breakdown video a few months ago and is back with this one featuring Bryant:
Here are some of the key takeaways made by Bryant in the video:
On not being baited by New England’s pre-snap motion
"We knew they were going to run a bunch of motion to see if we were in man or zone. That doesn’t really change too much because it’s just off of whatever disguise we were in, we wanted to keep it the same. Just be consistent and stay patient in the disguise and on the snap of the ball, then we get into the cover."
As many of you already know, I have a non-negotiable daily habit to watch at least 10 minutes of football explainers/Xs and Os/breakdown videos in order for me—a person who retired from football at age 16—to better understand the sport I cover. I’ve been doing that for over three years now and if there’s one aspect to strategy that seems to be the most repetitive from all those videos, it’s the usage of pre-snap motion to identify man or zone.
I like to take things slowly, step-by-step, so if there’s one lesson I’ve learned about watching football it’s that the first step would be the alignments of the offense and the defense, but maybe the second step is to follow the pre-snap motion and then identify, “Does someone on the defense mirror the offensive player or not?”
Yes? It’s probably man coverage.
No? It’s probably zone coverage.
Now, that’s not 100% guaranteed. It could be a combination of man and zone coverage. But you’re hearing it right from the safety’s valve:
“We knew the Patriots were going to run a lot of motion to identify our coverages. We were prepared for that. It doesn’t really matter.”
On Devon Witherspoon’s Cover-0 blitz
Cover-0 is basically no deep safeties, bring the house, if an offensive player gets behind the defense because the blitzer(s) didn’t get home quick enough it could be a very bad outcome for the defense with no help over the top.
“Cover-0. First things first, get your mind right, ‘cuz you know, it's mano a mano. That’s the biggest thing with that. Spoon is an elite player, an elite blitzer too, and I’m trying to hold my shell as much as possible and not get beat vertical. Maye can have the out or whatever the case may be, we just rally to tackle that, but the ball should be out right now and that’s why Spoon was able to get this pressure.”
In the world of Devon Witherspoon looking to become the highest-paid defensive back in the history of the league (for a month or a year, but not for that long), the Super Bowl has become his smoking gun.
It’s kind of like when an actor attempts to make the jump from TV to movies. There’s skepticism there until the actor actually has a big screen hit and knows that there’s a ton of heat around them for the time being. George Clooney didn’t immediately leave ER for Hollywood after his first movie. He did a few more and then had The Perfect Storm in 2000, followed by a few more popular hits.
Before the Super Bowl, Witherspoon might have been seen as a bankable TV star. He became such a weapon for Macdonald in the Super Bowl, soon Drake Maye was so worried that he kept asking himself about Spoon, “O Brother, Where Are Thou?”
Mike Macdonald, teaching vs scheme
Coby was asked if he thinks Macdonald is better at teaching or scheming and Bryant’s response was, “It could be both”.
“Only the people inside the building know how much work he puts in. The hours he puts in studying the opponent. And the teaching aspect when he first came, it was tough because it was a new system. But gradually getting better as you get more confident. Once you pretty much get comfortable in that system and make plays in that system, it's pretty easy honestly."
When it comes to how we judge coaches, the value of how they teach players is so underrated compared to the emphasis places on Xs and Os, schemes, strategy, and game management. But in reality, if you teach the players properly, the rest of the job is a given.
On players know what their teammates assignments are, Bryant goes back to Macdonald’s influence:
“It’s preparation. Tons of it. Meetings with Mike, giving us tools here and there. He’s elite. I’m gonna keep speaking on that, he’s elite at that type of stuff. Just him, you know, dropping those jewels to us and and, you know, allowing us to go out there and play free, that helped a lot, too. Honestly, like putting our like using our strengths and putting them out there, displaying them helped tremendously. He finds what you’re good at and throws it out there for you to make plays.”
Bryant speaks on how Nick Emmanwori is only scratching the surface of what he’s capable of and that he had a lot more to learn as a player, but also that he’s going to be a much bigger leader next season with players like Bryant and Tariq Woolen no longer on the team.
“Don’t take the Cheese”
On defending against Maye, Bryant says that guarding the sticks and allowing the Patriots to complete passes that the defense knows they can tackle before a first down is actually part of their intention.
“That’s just a ‘don’t take the cheese.’ Like he can have that. Like that’s what we want him to throw honestly. Like if he if he throws that we got to go tackle right there, right now.”
Another reason to believe that so many quarterback stats, especially completion percentage, are overrated.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely obsessed with stats. Numbers probably got me into sports more than anything else. But within that obsession, we have to remember that we can be equally fascinated by how numbers lie.
20 years ago, Maye gaining almost 300 passing yards and throwing two touchdowns would have been praised as a “good game”.
With better context of the numbers and the game situation, we know that Maye was suffocated throughout the contest and that it was only after Seattle employed a different strategy when up 19-0 in the fourth quarter that it actually became beneficial to allow New England to gain more yards and run the clock down.
The Seahawks forced three turnovers against Drake Maye and before the final touchdown, Seattle’s defense actually had as many scores as New England’s offense.
On pre-snap recognition
“I knew it was coming right away... 3x1. Him at 2. So, I’m just like ‘I know it’s coming right now.’ So, I just got a good jump on that.”
As I said before, the first step is recognizing alignment, so a 3x1 (three receivers to one side, one receiver to the other side) is where the eyes of the defense goes immediately after the huddle. Is it 11, 12, or 13 personnel (first number is the number of RBs, second number is the number of TEs, so 13 personnel is 1 RB, 3 TEs)?
Are the receivers to the field side or the boundary side? If the ball is on the right hash, then field side would be the wider side to the left of that, while boundary would be the shorter side to the right of that.
If this feels elementary to some of you, or things you did not know, just remember that we’re all at different levels of understanding because amazingly football doesn’t require fans to understand what’s happening beyond “Where ball?”
Following the ball is often entertaining enough. If that weren’t true, 30 million people wouldn’t be watching Sunday Night Football between the Jaguars and the Giants.
On learning from past games
Seattle’s worst game of the regular season had to be their loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in many respects, especially given how good Baker Mayfield was against the top-rated pass defense. Late in the game, Bryant crosses the entire field to breakup a deep bomb from Maye to Mack Hollins.
“All week we were saying they love the big post by 1. So I’m in a half at the bottom here in Cover-2. Once I see 1 (Mack Hollins) do the dig, I’m flipping and finding that post. Julian, he’s on it too, but Hollins actually slips but if he didn’t I still have to be able to make that play.
We got hit with this play in Tampa. They ran a big, skinny post. So he actually didn’t keep it as skinny as I thought he did. So, once I seen that that inward dig by 18 right there, I’m like ‘there, this is my (opportunity) right there.’ And obviously, I didn’t come down with it. So, I was pretty mad about that.”
Bryant wanted the interception but didn’t get it. However, he had four in the regular season and seven over two seasons with Macdonald, leading to a three-year, $40 million deal with the Bears.
The Seahawks wanted to keep Bryant, I’m sure, but that much money for a safety in a system designed to increase the value of cheap safeties (like Bryant and Ty Okada last season) isn’t the business that John Schneider preaches. Seattle was able to draft Bud Clark in the second round and he could end up being a Week 1 starter alongside Julian Love and getting in a heavy rotation with Okada and Emmanwori, as well as free agent Rodney Thomas II.
Not to say that Coby Bryant won’t be missed. But as he said himself, the Seahawks are in great hands.
No doubt MM puts the work in. I think it was Spoon who said in an interview MM picked up a tell by the Patriots offensive tackle in the Super Bowl which gave away if it was a run or a pass. On passing plays his outside leg was much further away from the line of scrimmage to enable a quick step backwards in pass pro. On running plays it was more forward to enable quick forward motion.
I contrast this to the Seattle O-line where more than one player talked about how important it was to start off exactly the same in a run set or a passing set. Don’t give away the play. This is Benton, who I saw last year at the VMAC measuring the distance between lineman to insure they was exactly where they were suppose to line up. NO TELLS is the goal, and we see how important that can be if another team is really looking at every minute detail.
It feels really good to hear Coby praising Mike McD and the 'Hawks defensive philosophy. Sad for him to go and good on him for getting paid. I am stoked to see what Mike and the other coaches get up to as this defense evolves and sharpens. Go 'Hawks!