The disappearing Godfather

The Seahawks want to start over on defense but it won't all happen in one offseason: Seaside Joe 1884

At the conclusion of the 2024 NFL Draft, the Seattle Seahawks had picked four defensive players in total but one very significant addition in first round pick Byron Murphy II. The reviews were almost universally glowing for Seattle’s luck to land Murphy in the middle of the first round and to give head coach Mike Macdonald a “Justin Madubuike” defensive tackle without having to pay Justin Madubuike prices, which are presently set at $25 million per season.

Chris Long, whose Green Light podcast I highlighted when the Seahawks picked Murphy because I respected his glowing endorsement of the Texas defensive tackle, followed Thursday’s first round by saying, “One of my favorite players in the draft, one of my favorite fits in the draft.”

Michael Lombardi mentioned Byron Murphy throughout his The GM Shuffle podcast as a player who should have been picked instead of whoever that team picked ahead of him, including why the Falcons should have picked Murphy over Michael Penix, why the Bears should have picked Murphy over Rome Odunze, and why the Raiders should have picked Murphy over Brock Bowers.

“I mean, there’s John Schneider at 16 and he gets one of the best defensive players in the draft. The other being Laiatu Latu falling to the Colts at 15.”

It would appear that even without Pete Carroll, the Seattle Seahawks continue to zig while the rest of the league zags. In fact, it could be argued that the Seahawks wouldn’t have zigged hard enough if they didn’t fire Pete Carroll. By firing Carroll, hiring Macdonald, drafting Murphy, and re-signing Leonard Williams, the Seahawks have made it clear that the Seattle franchise intends as hard as ever to boast the number one defense in the NFL. Unfortunately, there was just too much evidence on the wall that whatever special powers Pete had at the beginning of his tenure, the potion had been lost in the ocean.

The Seahawks want to have the number one defense in the NFL. Are they any closer to that goal four months after resetting the franchise with a head coach who is half Pete’s age, but twice as relevant in the modern game?

Godfather is dead

Maybe one of Seaside Joe’s film students could explain it to me, but I’ve always struggled to understand the career of Francis Ford Coppola. For a long time I’ve had to Francis Ford cope with the “double life” that is his IMDb page and accept that he’s either a misunderstood artist too brilliant for regular humans or he was involved with some sort of Monkey’s Paw/Devil-Soul-Sale situation in the 1970s.

If Monkey’s Paw gives you what you want at the ultimate price, then that extraordinary cost turned Coppola from someone on a pace to have the greatest filmography of all-time to this:

1972-1979: The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now…And then Coppola’s career got post-Apocalyptic.

For some, those are four of the ten best movies ever made and for many they’d at least be on a top-100. Since then, Coppola has made some serviceable movies, the “Julian Love” section of your DVD collection, and you might even call one or two of them a “personal favorite” which is fine, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Peggy Sue Got Married, The Outsiders, The Rainmaker, The Godfather Part III, Tucker, and Rumble Fish.

(I doubt anyone puts Jack, which is referenced in the gif above in case you’re unaware, in their personal favorites list for reasons of good quality.)

But if Francis Ford Coppola didn’t have the first four movies, then nobody would even know his name after having the rest of his career and instead he’d be in competitions for directing jobs with Tom Shadyac. “Who is Tom Shadyac?”

(Tom Shadyac directed Liar Liar, Patch Adams, The Nutty Professor, and Ace Ventura. I know none of those movies are like The Outsiders, but I’d rather watch Liar, Liar than any of Coppola’s post-Apocalypse movies.)

It’s been almost 30 years since Coppola has made a movie that anyone has actually seen and his latest Megalopolis is deemed “not good enough” for a grand marketing push. Coppola has said that he almost lost everything after 1981’s One from the Heart bombed at the box office, which certainly played a part in studio’s losing faith that he could make another Godfather until he finally did make another Godfather, which has been widely panned despite its relative success as a movie both financially and as an Oscar nominee.

But every director goes through box office bombs, critical flops, and creative slumps. All of them. Others from his era like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese always manage to find their way back into our good graces, yet Coppola didn’t. And maybe his experimental films of the 2000s are actually misunderstood movies that rival the work we actually know him for; I’ll never see Twixt or Tetro, so I couldn’t say:

In sports, the best ability is availability. In film, perhaps the best ability is watchability, so what should that tell us about a Hall of Fame director who no longer makes movies that anyone wants to go see?

Something similar could be said about a Hall of Fame head coach and philosophical guru who up until five years ago was on track for being listed next to only three or four other names as the greatest and most influential defensive minds of all-time. But Pete Carroll didn’t have one or two bad seasons prior to being fired, he had six or seven offseasons to recognize a problem on defense and then fix it through free agency, trades, and the draft to be better. Yet every year since 2016, the Seahawks would come back and be as bad—if not worse—than the season before.

If 2020 was Carroll’s “Dracula” season (not bad, not good enough to want to re-watch over and ovder again), then 2023 was his “Jack” and like Coppola needing to bite, scratch, and swing baseball bats for financial backing, not a single NFL team wanted to even interview Pete Carroll for their head coaching position in January. I know Pete’s “still with the Seahawks” but surely the two sides would have mutually split if he had received any phone calls from competition. That lack of interest should be even more relevant at a time that teams are actually looking for defensive gurus.

The antidote to Sean McVay is better than a clone of Sean McVay

There’s a narrative going around that NFL teams only hire offensive-minded head coaches now, but seven NFC coaches are hires since 2021 who came from the defensive side of the ball: Mike Macdonald, Dan Quinn, Matt Eberflus, Raheem Morris, Todd Bowles, Dennis Allen, and Jonathan Gannon.

And though Andy Reid won his third Super Bowl with the Kansas City Chiefs, the coach who got the most praise after the season was defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo. For anyone who thinks that Carroll didn’t get any interviews because he’s “cold product”, keep that in mind should a team hire Spagnuolo in 2025 if the Chiefs look anywhere near as good on defense again.

Spagnuolo was one of the worst head coaches of all-time, Carroll was one of the best, and yet their reputations today for who better understands how to stop a modern offense couldn’t be any further apart after Seattle’s string of box office bombs. (Spagnuolo’s comparison would be more like George Miller returning to Hollywood to make Mad Max: Fury Road thirty years after Beyond Thunderdome.)

Seahawks 2016-2023 defense

I wish I could format this in a way that is easier to understand but not as busy as the full page on Pro-Football-Reference.com, it’s the Seahawks offensive and defensive rankings from 2010-2023 with the 2023 season being on the top and 2010 being on the bottom:

The Seahawks had four straight seasons as the number one defense in the NFL: 2012-The Godfather, 2013-The Conversation, 2014-The Godfather Part II, 2015-Apocalypse Now

You could compare 2016 to The Outsiders, it’s not bad and some people say it’s one of the best and most influential movies of the era. But Carroll had his own version of the 90s, gradually getting worse and never having anything close to a comeback. Instead, the Seahawks defense quickly went from average to terrible and can any of us confidently say that the team has been easy to watch in the past five seasons even when Seattle made the playoffs?

If Carroll’s career had been judged by only the last three seasons and nothing that came before it, he might only be mildly more respected than former Falcons head coach/current Russell Wilson offensive coordinator Arthur Smith.

The Seahawks had to breakdown the defense as it was to start over, but couldn’t strip the team of all parts immediately because Carroll had invested money, draft picks, and 14 years into the team Seattle was in January. So oddly enough Seattle’s intention to rebuild the defense will result in a roster that looks largely the same in September. Macdonald was the match to strike, but how much of the kindling he inherited will make the fire to cook his stew?

Seahawks defense is mostly the same

Despite how badly the Seahawks needed a new defense, it’s surprising just how many starters from last year are returning to their jobs in 2024. Not to imply that it is the wrong approach, you would just assume that Seattle’s intention to rebuild the defense would have actually involved more subtractions and additions.

Instead what we have seen happen is that the Seahawks have only “officially” replaced four starters from last season and you could argue that all of the new players might be worse than the old players.

Bobby Wagner → Jerome Baker

Jordyn Brooks → Tyrel Dodson

Quandre Diggs → Julian Love/K’Von Wallace?

Jamal Adams → Rayshawn Jenkins

Now before you tell me that these are better players today, I’ll explain what I mean by “you could argue”: I wanted to see Wagner and Brooks replaced AND I think Baker and Dodson were good moves to not overpay for new linebackers, but Dodson has made 15 career starts and Baker was released by the Dolphins because of some concerns related to durability.

"It's always a surprise with a great football player like Jerome who's in his prime and played so well last year," Rosenhaus said. "We wouldn't be having this discussion (of being released) had it not been for the knee injury that Jerome suffered when his teammate ran into his knee and he sprained his MCL in the Commanders game and certainly the injury that he suffered against the Bills with a dislocated wrist.”

Jenkins certainly should be an upgrade to the awful Adams, but I’m always going to err on the side of conservative prognostications; that way, if Jenkins is even a little bit good then you can feel great about it instead of asking, “Why isn’t he awesome?” I always say this about movies and TV shows: The lower your expectations, the better your experience.

My general feeling about linebacker and safety are that the changes are essentially a wash BUT not a total 1:1 because the Seahawks didn’t have to pay as much money to get similar value. Brooks got $16 million guaranteed from Miami, Wagner got $6.5 million from the Moons for a combined total of $22.5 million. Baker signed a one-year contract worth up to $7 million, whereas Dodson got $1 million guaranteed on a $4.3 million deal and could be released for $3.3 million in cap savings should the relationship be a total disaster. That’s only $8 million guaranteed vs. $22.5 million guaranteed for the outgoing linebackers.

Seattle gave Jenkins a two-year, $12 million deal with $6.3 million guaranteed and Wallace a $1.5 million deal with a $205,000 signing bonus. That means that the Seahawks signed Jenkins and Wallace for half as much as what they SAVED just by releasing Diggs.

You could put in these terms:

Releasing Quandre Diggs and Jamal Adams gave Seattle the money necessary to sign Baker, Dodson, Jenkins, and Wallace. You could add the fourth defensive free agent DT Johnathan Hankins to that equation too.

But what’s interesting is that these should be financial wins for Schneider, not necessarily moves that make the Seahawks “obviously better” going into the 2024 season in terms of the defensive starters and the depth chart.

RE: Run

By the numbers, the Seahawks run defense actually went from bad to worst after trading for Leonard Williams.

Games 1-7 (w/o Leo): 10th in rushing yards allowed, third in yards per carry allowed (3.6)

Games 8-17 (w/Leo): 32nd in rushing yards allowed, 32nd in yards per carry allowed (5.2)

(I know it seems like the run defense was great at the start of the season, but I don’t want to go that far. I think teams weren’t afraid to pass on the Seahawks, nor should they have been, and maybe Pete Carroll overcorrected.)

That may not be Williams’ fault, he could be a victim of timing and simply walked into a bad situation that he couldn’t help at the time, but it is no less true that the Williams-Dre’Mont Jones-Jarran Reed front was starting when Seattle absolutely sucked against the run. The Seahawks’ effort sucked, the communication sucked, and looking back knowing that Pete was fired it feels like some players were almost gleeful to contribute to his demise.

Some veteran players have even hinted at relief that Seattle has a new head coach, even though the tone was much different a year ago when the Seahawks made the playoffs as a team that wasn’t a whole lot better than 2023’s version.

You can sometimes get what you want

The Seahawks wanted to make the playoffs and win a relevant playoff game. The Seahawks wanted a better defense because they felt it was the longest-running issue holding them back from winning a playoff game. The Seahawks blamed Pete Carroll for the defense. The Seahawks hired the NFL’s hottest name on defense and whether Mike Macdonald turns out to be overrated or not, he had the guru reputation that the Seahawks were looking to replace Pete with as head coach.

The Seahawks wanted to give Macdonald the pieces needed to make his defense work, so the Seahawks kept Leonard and saved over $10 million by replacing expensive players with cheap starters who might not be noticeably worse. Then the Seahawks drafted Byron Murphy, rated far and wide as the best defensive tackle in the class without a close second, instead of trading down or picking a guard or picking a quarterback. The Football Scout is always a little too glowing for me to fully trust his Seahawks reports, but this film breakdown of Murphy emphasizes the potential upside in the pick:

Macdonald, Murphy, Williams, Witherspoon represent the four biggest steps int he past 12 months to take the Seahawks from the bottom-five to the top-five in defense. Boye Mafe, Uchenna Nwosu, Derick Hall, Jerome Baker, Jarran Reed, Riq Woolen, Julian Love and others who probably deserve to be named but just didn’t make my list for word count purposes are the next step in that reformation of defense.

Maybe the plan will work or maybe it won’t, but sadly the defense couldn’t be any worse than it had gotten with Pete Carroll over the past six years.

Sometimes a genius can look at his artwork and see what needs to be fixed. Sometimes a genius couldn’t see Jack.