3 draft surprises that could impact Seahawks special teams
3 draft surprises that could impact Seahawks special teams
Could the Jay Harbaugh hire lead to changes at kicker, returner, and captain? Seaside Joe 1856
An oversight at Seaside Joe, if not worldwide, is a lack of attention given to the third phase of football. I can attempt to rectify that with this Sunday’s post about special teams and why the Seattle Seahawks probably won’t be overlooking kickers, returners, and captains to the same “third phase degree” that I’ve given them.
The Seahawks have a new head coach, a new offensive coordinator, and a new defensive coordinator, but the transition from Larry Izzo to Jay Harbaugh as special teams coordinator could be a catalyst to just as much change as the other more “popular” parts of the football team.
Harbaugh was born in 1989 when his dad was a quarterback for the Chicago Bears, but Jay’s playing career ended in high school and he immediately started preparations to follow the family bloodlines in coaching. In a 2014 interview with The Mercury News, Jay Harbaugh said he enrolled at Oregon State specifically to be a coaching asssitant for Mike Riley, his dad’s former head coach on the San Diego Chargers.
“I looked around and the kids who were good in math talked about going to college for engineering,” he said. “I thought, ‘I love football. Why not go to school for that?’ “
Harbaugh called his former coach, Riley, who agreed to help: Jay would enroll at Oregon State and participate in the football team’s undergraduate assistant program. Jay did a little of everything, with an emphasis on special teams.
“He set the standard for our program,” Riley said.
Though Harbaugh has tried to skirt the nepotism questions to some degree and prove to be a coach who came up through the ranks on his own merit, truthfully he didn’t try that hard: As soon as he graduated from Oregon State, Jay took a job with uncle John on the Baltimore Ravens (he crossed paths with Mike Macdonald for one season there) and then joined his dad Jim on the Michigan staff in 2015. Jay officially became the full-time special teams coordinator in 2019 and though it isn’t easy to rank the third phase, the Wolverines were second in special teams “FEI” in 2022 and third in 2021. They were 27th in FEI in 2023, and I’m not sure to what degree that was impacted by the loss of kicker Jake Moody to the NFL Draft.
In replacing Izzo with the Seahawks, Harbaugh makes the first attempt of his professional career to coach players without his father or uncle as his boss. This isn’t to say that connections aren’t helping as Macdonald and Harbaugh also worked together in important roles on the 2021 Michigan team, but now Jay Harbaugh is one step closer to following a family member in another direction: Becoming one of the rare special teams coordinators, like uncle John, to get a head coaching opportunity in the NFL.
That’s probably still many years away from happening, if it ever does (John Harbaugh had to spend nine years as the Eagles special teams coordinator, then one as a defensive backs coach, before he was hired by the Ravens) and one of the steps I’d expect Seattle to take with their new special teams coordinator is to address potential changes with special teams players.
The Seahawks have already cut special teams captain Nick Bellore this year, although they have thus far maintained relationships with five of the top-seven players in special teams snaps from 2023: Brady Russell, Jon Rhattigan, Derick Hall, Michael Jackson, and Artie Burns, with the exception being DeeJay Dallas. We already knew that Dallas would probably have to be replaced, at least as a returner.
Could Seattle be discussing the possibility of other new special teams players, including kicker? These are three draft-related questions about special teams that I’m pondering on the even of NFL Draft month.
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