Former Seahawks OL: 'They're not going to punch you in the face anymore'

“I love Seattle to death, but they aren't the same team" says Alex Boone, former 49ers and Seahawks OL: Seaside Joe 1944

During Wednesday’s episode of Seaside Joe about the Seahawks offensive line and what you would do to guarantee a top-5 season, I failed to mention the podcast episode that got me thinking about that idea in the first place. Maybe I was just doing myself a subconscious favor as it is not a positive view of Seattle’s offensive line, but is it a fair one? Both hosts of the offensive line podcast that I respect the most has the Seahawks in the bottom-10 of their offensive line rankings, and a former Seattle player has them in the bottom-5.

One of my favorite podcasts to keep up with is The O-Line Committee because Jeremiah Sirles and Alex Boone have a significant amount of combined experience playing offensive line in the NFL. They also represent and work for young offensive line players in the NFL, so they’re more connected to what’s happening at that position than any other show I am aware of at any point in time.

Boone also spent a short period of time on the Seahawks under Pete Carroll, signing with the team at the end of the 2020 season after a three-year absence. Though I mostly remember Boone as a member of the 49ers during the Jim Harbaugh years, I have seen enough of the show to have a confident opinion that he doesn’t have anything against Seattle.

When it comes to Seattle’s offensive line though, Boone was less optimistic than those who might have already purchased a Christian Haynes jersey.

In their 2024 offensive line rankings, Sirles ranked the Seahawks 23rd and Boone ranked them 29th. I’ve queued up Boone’s opinion here:

“I love Seattle to death, but I think the fact that their tackles are young and they were both hurt last year, for me there is a lot to prove here and there. It’s going to be a tough year again. It’s so hard for me to talk about Seattle because when I played Seattle and the Niners, they were a different team, in my opinion. They had a different mindset, a different mentality, and they’ve kind of like split off into a different road now. They’re not the team that they used to be and they’re not this, “We’re going to come out and punch you right in the fucking face and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it”.

It’s weird for me to see them not be like that, but at the same time I think they have the foundation to be a really good team this year. Their offensive line is going to have to take some steps, but I mean I think 29 is a fair point for them.”

It can’t be easy to host an NFL podcast when you actually worked with and are friends with some of the players and coaches and personnel of the current teams that you’re talking about. But I wouldn’t know how to rank the Seahawks in the top-20 offensive lines going into the season either because this is a team that is almost entirely gassed up with potential and ifs.

As I’ve written in the past, the presumed best player is a question mark to start the season at right tackle because of a lingering knee issue, and the top-10 pick at left tackle has to take another step forward in pass protection to justify big contract numbers looming in 2026 and beyond. The left guard is the most experienced but wasn’t highly-requested on the free agent market after being released by the Jets, the most OL-needy team in the league, while right guard and center look to be replaced with first-time starters.

I’ve structured my whole offseason writing career around why predictions and expectations are often wrong. “Offensive line rankings”, like any rankings of subjective analysis, are also very abstract, so I hate to even say where Seattle’s offensive line could “rank” in 2024. But I can understand why anyone would be worried based on the relative lack of experience and the questions on Lucas’s knee.

That being said, Alex Boone is a former 49er so please have at it:

Let’s do a quick round of Seaside Streams, where I email you some of my best Seahawks and NFL-related watches of the week with a bonus miscellaneous clip at the end.

Mike Lombardi: ‘Mike Macdonald will fix their defensive issues’

Lombardi went on The Pat McAfee Show on Thursday and was asked for his thoughts on Mike Macdonald (queued up here) and the outlook of the 2024 Seahawks. For me, the comments are a little bit too general and not even an answer to McAfee’s question, which was Seattle’s decision to hire a defensive coordinator again, but Lombardi’s still right that the Seahawks have the potential to be better than last year’s 9-8 team.

“When you look at Seattle, Pat, the last two years their defense has not played well. I think it’s probably one of the things that drives Pete Carroll crazy because Pete Carroll is a defensive coordinator at heart and he loves defensive football. But they could’t stop the run. They are 20-13 at home in Seattle and it’s supposed to be a hard place to play, (Quandre) Diggs will tell you that Pittsburgh went in there and put 400 yards on them in a game they had to win in Week 17 or else they would have made the playoffs. But they couldn’t stop them in the running game or from throwing the ball.

Mike Macdonald will fix their defensive issues. This team won nine games last year, this team had a lot of injuries, they had to bring Jason Peters off the street, a 40-year-old tackle because Abe Lucas and Charles Cross both got hurt. So I think this is a really good team.

I think Kenneth Walker will be a really good player for them, he’s a really good running back. He played 15 games last year, so if he can stay healthy; they’ve got good receivers, Jaxon Smith-Njigba they has had a great camp, like most people do without pads on. But they’ve got three legitimate receivers. If that offensive line comes together and I think if Geno Smith protects (the football, I’m guessing?), this has got a chance to a good team.

Defensively, they got Murphy in the draft, which is key for them. And if they can stop the run and get that crowd back in Seattle to turn in their favor? They won nine games last year and I think they have a chance to be competitive in the West.”

Again, it’s a little bit general. Any team will be a good team if their offensive line comes together and their best players stay healthy and they don’t turn over the football and they stop the run and they go 9-0 at home.

Overall though, it’s true that Mike Macdonald should be the best person available to fix the defensive issues right now. And he doesn’t mention probably my favorite second-favorite change of the offseason, which was hiring Ryan Grubb as offensive coordinator.

Don’t forget to check out my “MORE” comments in the comments section and leave some comments of your own. We had a great discussion going in the comments on Wednesday about the most painful losses at guard and center in Seahawks history:

Mike Macdonald film studies

I kept forgetting to add this to a couple of recent episodes, but our friend All_22y posted another video on Macdonald’s defense and “the craziest defensive minds in the NFL”. Good for Julian Love that he has played for Wink Martindale in the past.

“Macdonald and Martindale are the two defensive coordinators I’ve watched the most film of since I started doing YouTube film study videos.”

He talks about the “glitch blitz”, which I wrote about here.

I’m not sure what the channel The Legion of 12s is just yet. But if it continues like this, that would be a really good thing for us.

This next one is not quite a Macdonald film study exactly, but you’re going to get Macdonald film from it anyway. J.T. O’Sullivan aka The QB School did a series on Matthew Stafford this week and the second clip is him against the Ravens in 2023. That’s a Mike Macdonald film study…

One other video, not about Macdonald, is this one about Daniel Jones. It includes some key bad plays against the Seahawks from last season:

Leslie Frazier on Move the Sticks

I am more excited for Leslie Frazier as Macdonald’s assistant head coach than ever after hearing him on the Move the Sticks podcast this week. Frazier says that maybe his biggest regret as a head coach was not taking the advice to hire an experienced head coach as his assistant during his first year. Sounds like Frazier has a lot of insight to share with Macdonald on what not to do.

Speaking of NFL Network videos that I’m not able to embed in articles, here’s 60 minutes of NFC West highlights.

Bob Cousy can’t miss

A short one…NBA Hall of Famer Bob Cousy makes a cameo in Blue Chips, at which point he would have been about 66. And apparently they didn’t tell him ot not miss any of his shots but he did it anyway.

Finally, it is hard for a video to get me to immediately watch it front to back the first time it’s suggested to me if it’s over a few minutes, but I was very enraged by this interview with Walton Goggins. Sorry not enraged, engaged.