Jay Harbaugh was always good

Seahawks fans ask questions about special teams, the Cardinals, tight ends, defensive backs, and what's going on with Boye Mafe?

One thing that we already KNOW Mike Macdonald brought with him from Baltimore to Seattle was DEFENSE.

After losing to the Lions 38-30 on Monday night, the Ravens now rank 31st in points allowed and 32nd in yards allowed in 2025. They’re 30th in first downs allowed, 31st in passing yards allowed, 30th in rushing yards allowed, and ranked in the bottom-10 in third downs/red zone on defense.

In Macdonald’s last season as the Ravens defensive coordinator, Baltimore was first in points allowed, first in rushing touchdowns allowed, first in takeaways, sixth in first downs allowed, first in yards per pass attempt allowed, and top-7 in third down/red zone defense.

Macdonald took over a Seattle defense that ranked 25th in points allowed, 30th in yards allowed, and 31st in rushing yards allowed in 2023. As of Tuesday, the Seahawks are 2nd in points allowed, fourth in takeaways, seventh in rushing yards allowed, and third in red zone defense.

We knew that Macdonald stole Baltimore’s defense when he left John Harbaugh’s office for the last time. But that’s not all he took with him.

The Ravens have long been the NFL’s preeminent special teams unit. The gold standard. Is a new Harbaugh going to take the lead in that regard with Seattle?

Every week, I put out a special newsletter to Super Joes founding members subscribers asking them to send questions and thoughts about the Seattle Seahawks. If you want to get the next one, upgrade to Super Joes today!

Flurb: Our Hawks are living up to their name, image & likeness with special teams mastery. If a seagull played NFL football, they would block punts, return punts, recover Kickoffs for points, and dance to the opponents’ treasured psych song in their house!

How has Jay Harbaugh developed success from last year’s “meh?”

(btw spellcheck suggested “garbage”, that’s harsh! & he’ll never supplant our favorite “Jay!”)

I was never in favor of blaming Harbaugh for Laviska Shenault and Dee Williams being terrible at holding onto the football. That’s not what they’re coached to do and they did it FIVE TIMES.

This metric ranked Seattle’s special teams 15th in the NFL last year despite the fumbles and the blocked Jason Myers field goal against the Giants. The Seahawks rankings:

• 4th in Net Punt

• 11th in Opp. Net Punt

• 17th in KO Return

• 22nd in KO Coverage

• 25th in FG%

Dickson ranked 5th in net punt average (43.3) and we already knew that he’s a really good punter. Myers is a good kicker, he went 9-of-12 beyond 50 yards, including a long of 59. He went 18-of-19 inside 50. He went 37-of-40 on extra points.

The Seahawks returned their top-5 in special teams snaps (Drake Thomas, Jake Bobo, Mike Morris, Dareke Young, and Brady Russell) but they added Chazz Surratt, who is 3rd in snaps and already making a noticeable impact. Eric Saubert and Nehemiah Pritchett are fifth and sixth in special teams snaps.

There was no reason for me to believe that Harbaugh was a bad special teams coach in 2024, only a reason for me to agree that Larry Izzo committed no crimes worthy of being fired with the rest of Pete’s staff. It’s no secret that Macdonald did that so he could hire his buddy from Michigan, but this does not make it a bad hire.

Seattle’s special teams is probably the best such unit in the NFL through three games. Will that continue for 17 games? It might. All the pieces are there.

Tim McConnell: How much will James Conner being out affect the Cardinals offense? Will this change the Hawks defensive game plan?

This season, James Conner had 32 carries for 95 yards, an average of only 3.0 YPC. He was ineffective in all three games this season and we can’t say if that was merely an unlucky streak or if Conner is a lesser version of himself at age 30.

In Conner’s career against the Seahawks (his teams have gone 1-6 against Seattle by the way), he has 106 attempts for 440 yards (4.15 YPC) and caught 32 of 34 targets for 236 yards and 2 TD with zero fumbles lost. Last season, Conner had games of 27 for 150 yards and 7 for 8 yards against the Seahawks, two completly opposite performances. Seattle won both games.

Is Connor a major factor against the Seahawks? Sometimes, but we can’t say if he would have made a difference on Thursday.

Is Trey Benson better? He might be, as a runner.

New starter Trey Benson was a third round pick in 2024 and he averaged 4.6 yards per carry on 63 attempts in 2024. Unlike Conner, Benson has shown no special ability as a receiver (career: 14 catches for 104 yards) but maybe Arizona hasn’t had to ask him to do that yet. With extended action against the 49ers in Week 3, Benson had 10 carries for 42 yards.

He has a career average of 5.0 yards per carry, including 6.0 YPC in 2025 albeit on roughly one game’s worth of attempts.

Here’s a rundown I saw on Twitter:

Benson absolutely fits the mold of a workhorse back standing at 6’0, 220 lbs and has been a guy I’ve been high on for a while now…The Cardinals are a team who want to run the football, their identity the last 2 seasons has shown this. They split 55/45 this season run/pass which lines up exactly with last season. They’re also a team who generally refuses to go away from their run game even if it’s not that effective which is a huge positive here against what has been a good run defense (so far) from Seattle.

Benson has been considered one of the top backups that fantasy football players have wanted to see become a starter. With Conner and Benson at such polar opposite stages of their careers, this change may have happened eventually without an injury to force it.

It’s important to note that Benson had 81 yards on two of his carries (52 and 29), leaving the rest of his season at this:

19 carries, 44 yards, 2.3 yards per carry

Now he gets a Seahawks defense ranked third in YPC allowed (3.2), second in EPA per rush allowed, and fourth in Rushing Yards Over Expectation allowed.

It’s one of the top run defenses in the NFL (maybe getting several key players back this week) vs. a new starter who has gotten two-thirds of his season total rushing yards on two plays. I don’t think Conner was going to do much better against Seattle, maybe he would have done even worse actually, so I’m laying my bets on this running back change having little impact. Maybe the biggest difference is that Conner has been so reliable as a receiver, so what’s Arizona going to do to try and offset that loss?

Join us for the LIVE Seaside Joe Seahawks-Cardinals chat on Thursday:

zezinhom400: I honestly thought our running game would be a bit stronger than it has been (only the Pittsburgh game met my expectations), but conversely the passing game has been quite a bit better than I expected. Do you foresee us inching back to Grubb Land where the passing game more and more characterizes our offense?

This chart shows that the Seahawks have the lowest “pass rate over expectation” in the entire NFL through three games. (Seattle is the light blue team on the right):

This means that the Seahawks are running in more passing situations than any other offense in the NFL.

I think you’re asking if the Seahawks need to start passing in more passing situations, but is there a fear of losing some strength as a passing offense if you try to tweak things now? Also, I can’t really see myself taking Week 3’s offensive stats very seriously because the Saints were so thoroughly dominated in the first half of the game; Seattle was up 21-0 barely over 10 minutes into the game.

This skews everything that happened in Week 3 to be a little hard to use as evidence of what’s working when they go against better teams.

At most, maybe the Seahawks should start replacing a few runs per game with a few screen passes per game, “extend” the run game to the outside passing game, and maybe that will help move the chains a couple of extra times compared to running into a wall. I just don’t want to see the Seahawks sacrifice the effectiveness of their passing game (2nd in Net Yards/Attempt) because they abandon the run (29th in total pass attempts).

Danno: Is this the TE break out game on offense? Kyler Murray is usually very skittish in the pocket when he senses pressure is coming. Does he have multiple turnovers that ice this game for us? I feel we can bring that pressure without blitzing making it more difficult for him to correctly see the defense and force errant throws for picks.

The Seahawks have thrown 12 passes to tight ends this season (15.5% of all targets) and they’ve gone for 8 catches, 99 yards, 1 TD. That’s a pace of 561 yards.

Compare this to 2023: 99 targets, 74 catches, 833 yards, 3 TD.

John Schneider didn’t seem to agree with Pete Carroll’s picks at tight end, overhauling the roster by releasing Will Dissly/letting Colby Parkinson leave as a free agent, drafting A.J. Barner, then Elijah Arroyo, and signing Eric Saubert, until finally releasing Noah Fant in training camp.

The Seahawks have refocused on “dirty work” tight ends like Barner and Saubert, with a developmental receiver at the position in Arroyo. Is it fair to ask if Seattle isn’t overly concerned right now with forcing the ball to tight ends?

Until Arroyo’s blocking improves, he can’t see the field a ton (40% snaps) and Barner is not a burner. Barner had 610 receiving yards in three seasons at Michigan and he’s averaging under 15 yards per game in the NFL. I gave Barner his proper props last week for elite versatility as a “football player” but there’s not much evidence out there yet of him becoming a superb receiver.

The Cardinals have given up over 100 yards to a receiver in each of the last two games (Tetairoa McMillan and Ricky Pearsall) so I don’t see any reason to hold JSN back in this one. Seattle’s passing offense has been a little bit like a selfish kid with his toys (JSN has almost a 50% target share and he didn’t even play the second half) but I don’t see Klint Kubiak and Sam Darnold shifting gameplans this week when it’s Cooper Kupp and Tory Horton who need more targets, if anyone.

Kyler Murray is 2-8 in his career against the Seahawks with 12 TD/6 INT and 6 fumbles, getting sacked 32 times. And most of that was not even against Macdonald.

Largentium: Given the latest injury news from our divisional foes, can the Seahawks escape their personal Injury House of Horrors (State Farm Stadium, Glendale, AZ) AND win the game? The last thing this team needs is a key injury coming out of this game like so many years previously (among others - Sherman, Chancellor, Thomas, Dissly)

Playing in Arizona is hell, but playing there on a Thursday is a special circle of its own. Let’s just hope that the Seahawks are as aware of this as anyone and will have some sort of answer for personal safety. Is another game with a comfortable lead in the second half too much to ask for?

Burgdawg: I’d appreciate your thoughts on how Woolen performed against the Saints. I don’t remember hearing his name being mentioned during the broadcast as much as other DBs.

By the numbers, Tariq Woolen was targeted 6 times and allowed 4 catches for 38 yards. He had five tackles and one missed tackle.

In comparison, Josh Jobe was targeted 9 times, allowing 6 for 42 and recording 11 tackles without a miss. Derion Kendrick was targeted 4 times, allowing a six-yard catch and getting an interception, four tackles without a miss.

It’s painfully obvious that if you had to rank the top-4 Seahawks corners based solely on 2025, Woolen would be fourth. Nothing about that order was changed in Week 3 apart from the fact that Devon Witherspoon missed another game.

Maybe the lesson here is that whoever the CB4 is, Woolen or Kendrick or Jobe, that’s a pretty good CB4. Especially if we factor in the eventual return of Nick Emmanwori as the big nickel.

If Woolen’s game as “fine”, it could be due to the Saints having one of the worst passing offenses in the NFL, if not the worst. The Seahawks have better matchup opportunities to evaluate coming up with the Bucs and Jags following Arizona.

Rusty: Is our DB depth as good as it’s seemed the past 2 weeks? I feared when Spoon went down and when Love joined him, I figured our D would be in for a struggle. But so far, it’s been smooth sailing.

Can’t imagine any team’s DB depth being better than this. I mean, is Ty Okada a good starting safety? No. But teams don’t typically lose two starting safeties this early. All things considered, Okada handled himself adequately.

Grant: Has anyone stood out, either statistically or through the eye-test, as an edge rusher? Is Lawrence worth his price tag? Are Mafe and/or Hall keepers? Is Chenna showing us anything anymore?

DeMarcus Lawrence is cheap. 33rd in edge rusher AAV and not even in the top-50 for guaranteed money. What he lacks in sacks he might make up for by being a key component to a top-3 run defense.

Pro-Football-Reference lists Derick Hall with seven pressures, which is tied for the seventh-most. Zach Allen, Nick Bonitto, Trey Hendrickson, Nate Herbig, Joey Bosa, and….Byron Murphy II (9 pressures) are the only players with more.

Next Gen Stats has a different measurement for pressures, which gives out much more of them. Murphy has 13 pressures (tied for 11th) and Hall has 12 (tied for 13th).

Hall’s pressure rate of 19.7% (12 pressures on 61 pass rush snaps) is one of the highest in the NFL right now. Not as high as Nik Bonitto (31.3%) but close to Micah Parsons (21.8%). I can’t give you an exact number but it’s in the top-10. The questions we’d have is: Why doesn’t he get more snaps and why doesn’t Hall have any sacks?

Hall only plays 50% of the snaps. Lawrence plays 62% and Boye Mafe plays 60%. There has to be something that gives Macdonald pause on Hall as a more frequent player, if that’s run defense or something else.

Mafe has 9 pressures and a pressure rate of 14.1% at Next Gen Stats. He has basically the same number of pass rushing snaps as Hall. Uchenna Nwosu is being eased into the defense slowly and he has a pressure rate of 10% on 20 snaps. Lawrence has a pressure rate of 14.5%.

Right now does any Seahawks OLB deserve, let’s say a contract extension? No, I don’t think so. There’s nobody who I think Seattle can’t afford to lose after the season. Mafe will be a 2026 free agent and Lawrence/Nwosu both have to work to convince the Seahawks not to cut them for cap savings.

Because Hall is already signed through 2026, he’s in the best position for Seattle to keep and develop in the short term. Is he going to become a great player or is he just as good as he’s looked in the past 2.25 years, which is…fine. Derick Hall is fine.

The Seahawks are holding onto six edge rushers (these four + Jared Ivey and Connor O’Toole) which is a little bit odd, but Macdonald may not be confident in having players like Lawrence and Nwosu available to him for December and January. I don’t think the Seahawks would consider trading any of their edge rushers during the season because maybe the only thing they have going for them is depth.

The best thing I can say about the Seahawks edge rushers through three games is…that at least we get to watch Byron Murphy wreck shop.

Flurb: Have you ever seen a team’s play align so closely with their play or hometown? Maybe LT’s Giants? Drew Brees’ Saints? Kyle S’s Whiners?

Let’s put it to the community: Which teams do you think best exemplify the identity of the community? Which Seahawks team of all-time do you think best represents Seattle’s identity?

Seaside Joe 2395