Seaside Streams: Devon Witherspoon, Boye Mafe film study
Plus Olu Oluwatimi, Tush Push, Myles Garrett, and Frasier: Seaside Joe 1698
The Seattle Seahawks is defense is like if you couldn’t think of the right analogy and instead just pointed out that a football team has replaced a lot of below average starters with a lot of above average starters in a short period of time and that they could become great in the near future.
Or if you prefer metaphors, the Seahawks are a sports car that is actually a football team that is much more talented because of good draft picks and a head coach who isn’t going to let mediocrity overstay its welcome.
Damn now that’s what I call writing.
Go back just two seasons and though four of Seattle’s top-five defensive players in snaps are on the team in 2023, two of those four weren’t playing for the Seahawks last year: Jamal Adams and Bobby Wagner. The other two are Jordyn Brooks and Quandre Diggs. And yet what’s most notable about the group of players who are still in Seattle is that those four maybe have a little less to do with the Seahawks success or upward trajectory as all of the new guys.
Of the players ranked 6th-15th in snaps with the 2021 Seahawks, 9 of 10 are off the team.
The only one remaining is Darrell Taylor and he’s one of Seattle’s weak spots on defense as you’ll see in a video by Dave Wyman below. Wagner, Adams, Brooks, and Diggs are not throwaway starters and actually at any given time one of those four guys could be the Seahawk of the Day, but as noted, they were also on the defense when it sucked.
The defense, while not elite yet, is trending up and that’s arguably not something we could say about the Seahawks since Pete Carroll’s first two seasons in Seattle. Carroll took over a team that was terrible on both sides of the ball and the Seahawks went from 25th in points allowed under Jim Mora to 25th in points allowed in Carroll’s first season to 7th in points allowed in year two and first in points allowed from 2012-2015.
The 2010-2012 era was also when Pete and John essentially turned over 95% of the roster and proved impatient for players who didn’t immediately buy-in. Guys who some people felt were the best on the team or who Seattle had spent early draft picks on, like Darryl Tapp, Aaron Curry, Lawrence Jackson, Kelly Jennings, Josh Wilson, and Jordan Babineaux, were not able to stay with the Seahawks long enough to see the franchise become successful again.
Few move in Pete Carroll history drew more ire than trading Tapp for Chris Clemons and a fourth round pick. Stories were more about how the Eagles “got Darryl Tapp!” than Seattle’s belief that they had actually gotten much better from the move. Over the next three seasons, Clemons had 33.5 sacks compared to 6 for Tapp.
It’s been proven time and time again that Carroll doesn’t always know who he is getting when he makes a trade, signing, or draft pick, as the Seahawks have more acquisitions that were bad than were good. However, it’s also proven that Pete is extremely aware of when a player won’t be good and has almost never let someone get away who was better after he left Seattle.
There are some exceptions…but you could multiply their combined value by 100 and it wouldn’t come close to equaling what was gained by trading Russell Wilson at the peak time.
Going back to current players on the defense, only a handful were on the team two years ago (Wagner, Diggs, Brooks, Taylor, Adams, and Tre Brown), but half of those players were gone or non-existent last season. Most of the defense is made of players who were acquired since the Wilson trade and some directly because of the Wilson trade, including probably the best player on the entire defense:
Julian Love, Devon Witherspoon, Riq Woolen, Uchenna Nwosu, Dre’Mont Jones, Jarran Reed, Boye Mafe, Mario Edwards, Michael Jackson, Derick Hall, Coby Bryant, Artie Burns, and Cameron Young.
In two years, some of these players will have also moved on. However, a lot of them will still be on the Seahawks and that’s because they’ve earned a long-term role, which we have not seen much of from Seattle’s acquisitions in recent years.
I wrote more about the Seahawks defense on the rise in a bonus article posted this week, and also in another bonus article wrote about the ‘99 and younger’ club that is headlined by Witherspoon and Jaxon Smith-Njigba for the offense. I think there’s a lot of good research and information in those articles and the rest of the bonus content at Seaside Joe, so if you want to read more and/or want to support independent journalism that has no incentives to write about the Seahawks other than to make a living by giving you honest takes about the team without needing support from ads/sponsors, consider joining the bonus Regular Joes club for only $5 per month.
The Seaside Stream series is a periodical opportunity to share some Seahawks-related YouTube videos that I’ve watched recently that I think you would want to watch. There’s been a lot more posted about the Seahawks lately, probably because of their recent individual successes, so that means it is time to do another Seaside Streams.
Devon Witherspoon on All-22
I’m a big fan of this guy’s breakdowns even though he mainly does Ravens content. He’s a big fan of Seattle’s two starting cornerbacks though so that means once in a while a video about Witherspoon or Riq Woolen.
Boye Mafe “is becoming an elite defender”
This creator is new to me, but I’ll accept more Boye Mafe content. He’s been on a tear all season as a pass rusher but there are signs his run defense is improving too.
This guy is a huge Olu Oluwatimi fan
I don’t think the Football Scout is actually even a Seahawks fan, but he’s done a lot of videos on Seattle’s offensive linemen, including Oluwatimi and Abe Lucas (from last season). Oluwatimi is trending towards being the team’s full-time starter at center no later than 2024.
Can Seahawks tush push?
This isn’t a video about the Seahawks per se, but the best breakdown of the tush push I’ve seen yet as it comes from two former NFL offensive linemen. There is also a clip of Seattle stopping the Giants’ attempt to do the tush push on Monday Night Football.
J.J. Watt likes the unis
Not a video but still pretty cool
Get to know P.J. Walker
I wanted to find video of Walker’s game last week against the Colts, but the only breakdowns are from his time with the Panthers. Cleveland will start Walker this week as Deshaun Watson is back to being indefinitely ruled out for “mystery”. In short, P.J. Walker has not had a good career, it will be interesting to see how Seattle’s defense performs with this opportunity.
There is also this other clip from The O-Line Committee but talking about the Browns defense, which si better than P.J. Walker. There’s also this video about how dominant Myles Garrett is:
Dre’Mont Jones
CONTENT WARNING: THIS GUY IS A LITTLE BIT MUCH!
Whoever is making these videos is a little bit too far out there for me, turn down the energy by 20%, but it is still Dre’Mont Jones content which isn’t easy to find.
Dave Wyman on a BAD play
Give credit to Dave Wyman for showing both sides of Seattle’s defense. Here is one where Darrell Taylor can’t tackle, Riq Woolen can’t tackle, and Quandre Diggs maybe could have tackled if not for Woolen but still didn’t tackle.
Every JSN route vs the Cardinals
The video is as the title suggests.
Baby, I hear throwback blues are callin’…
Just a video on the history of Frasier Crane from Cheers to Frasier that I think is, unlike the new episodes of Frasier, interesting to watch. Hey it didn’t all have to be Seahawks content, did it? There’s at least something Seattle related.
Lots'o great videos, this is going to take a while to consume.
Fun detail about Frasier is that Kelsey Grammer was immediately loathed by the Cheers audience because he represented a threat to the Sam/Diane relationship, but eventually Shelley Long asked to leave the show and Frasier became a fan favorite. However, he nearly got written off the show for living his best life a little too hard (actually way too hard, but they loved Frasier so he survived). All that is ironic because he's the only cast member they eventually gave his own show and Frasier was one of the most successful spin-off sit-coms in TV history.
You just never know how things will eventually pan out, like Frank Clark coming back to the Seahawks. Life is strange.
Olu Olu, rookie C, earns a PFF rating of 77.5 with one pressure allowed (all per Corbin Smth) is remarkably good.
And the unis are the bomb, especially with the silver helmets.