Seahawks links: Figuring out Seattle's secondary

Strength of schedule, intermittent fasting, and versatile chess pieces: Seaside Joe 1634

It would be an honor if one day Seaside Joe could become the taste-maker of what Seahawks fans should read, watch, and listen to. The “Siskel and Ebert” of Suquamish & Everett, if you will.

With a late episode of Seaside Joe on Monday evening about under-the-radar Seahawks, preceded by a bonus article in the morning about four players who would be popular if exposed to waivers, I feel it would be a good time to just share some links with you.

If you haven’t already, subscribe to Seaside Joe.

Albert Breer visited Seahawks training camp

And he wrote about the size of chips and their proximity to certain shoulders.

“We were jaw-jacking, talking smack to each other. It’s minicamp, OTAs, and you can’t tell that,” recounted quarterback Geno Smith. “Guys are competing, like really competing. It’s really just the culture of the locker room. It’s what we do. I always go to the weight room at 6 a.m. no matter what I do, and I’ve got guys literally trying to beat me to the weight room. There are guys in there at 5:30, 5:40. I’m just like, Come on, guys.

“That’s how deep the competition is. Yeah, we’re a team, but who wants to be an alpha dog on the team? You’ve got Bobby Wagner, DK Metcalf, Tyler Lockett, myself, Jarran Reed, so many alphas. … It’s crazy, the night before I’m like, I need to get some sleep early, like 8:30, 9, because if I don’t get up at 5 a.m. and get out of my house at 5:15, somebody else is going to beat me to the weight room. That’s just the culture of our team at this point.”

I won’t be posting more than this pull quote from this article, it’s worth clicking the link to read through (or skim) the entire piece, of which there are many quotes similar to that one.

Should you bet the Seahawks win total over or under?

(Over, obviously)

The Seahawks are set at 8.5 wins, so can they at least match their 2022 record? I like what the Seahawks have done, as I’ve written many times before, and I also think that the league standings are heavily influenced by strength of schedule.

Setting aside what Seattle should do against the Cardinals and Rams, I’m at least comfortable saying that those appear to be two of the five-worst teams in the NFL.

However, the Seahawks also face the toughest division in football (AFC North) and the toughest division in the NFC (East) so maybe it evens out. Here’s what Sharp Football thinks about the strength of schedule, plus one of their two reasons to be the over:

The Seahawks are ranked #10 out of all 32 teams for NFL Strength of Schedule, giving them the 10th-easiest schedule for the 2023 NFL season.

#2 Reason to Bet Over:

Despite the offense hovering around league average in efficiency metrics, they struggled in the red zone. The Seahawks scored a touchdown on 48.3% of red zone trips, the sixth-worst rate. The addition of rookie running back Zach Charbonnet can help improve a rushing offense that had the third-lowest success rate in the red zone. The Seahawks finished with a -10.3% net red zone efficiency, a number that should regress.

It’s early to say how strong everybody’s schedule is, but worth pointing out that the NFC South is looking inviting to 13 wins if the Saints, Falcons, or Panthers succeeded in finding a quarterback.

Gregg Bell’s attempt to figure out the secondary

This post on The New Tribune is a week old, but in case you missed it there’s some interesting points about the secondary that I didn’t know. Like that undrafted free agent Jonathan Sutherland, a riser all offseason, has been working at nickel.

Sunday, in Seattle’s most recent practice before a players’ day off Monday, Carroll spent time after many plays tutoring Sutherland with coaching points. Carroll featuring not just versatility but also multiplicity with his Seahawks defense serves two purposes:

1. It puts the best players on Seattle’s defense, those in the secondary, on the field more, and they are playing in varied roles difficult for an offensive coordinator and quarterback to discern before the snap.

2. It follows a trend across the NFL, defenses’ answer to offenses using three- and increasingly four- and five-wide receiver formations.

Julian Love is going to start at safety while Jamal Adams is out, which could mean never or eternity, and then Adams is going to play somewhere around the box. But the twist is that Love and Quandre Diggs could also be moving around.

When Adams does return, Carroll and defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt have plans to use him close to the line of scrimmage as a blitzer and almost another linebacker. That would give Seattle a three-safety look on defense, with Love or even Diggs able to interchange with Adams in that close-to-the-line role on given downs.

The idea is to pressure offenses with more unpredictability about where Seattle’s defenders are coming from and what coverage and gap responsibilities they have.

So Coby Bryant has moved from outside corner to nickel, then from nickel to safety; Sutherland has moved from safety to nickel; Adams has moved from safety to linebacker; Devon Witherspoon could play outside and then slide inside on nickel formations; Diggs, who used to be a corner prior to moving to free safety, could spell Adams at linebacker; and Julian Love plays everything.

Who would have guessed that the most versatile person in the Seahawks secondary isn’t the one named Michael Jackson?

Dan Viens on the Seahawks win over the Cowboys

Just some good points here made by Dan Viens, he definitely noticed some things in Saturday’s game that I completely missed on first viewing.

The importance of offensive line continuity

Especially early in the season and on the road. Michael Lombardi notes how hard it can be for teams to have strong offensive line play early in the season if they lack continuity, especially when playing an away game.

Well, the Seahawks have pretty good continuity. They open at home against the Los Angeles Rams. The Rams have no offensive line continuity.

The Seahawks bring back both of their starting offensive tackles, their starting left guard, and a right guard who played in half of the snaps in 2022. The only change is Evan Brown or Olu Oluwatimi at center. If Brown wins that job, as expected, then he will have spent most of training camp with the starters and Geno Smith.

The Rams bring back one starter from last season, which is right tackle Rob Havenstein. L.A. is holding competitions at left tackle, center, and right guard. The left guard position will be manned by rookie second round pick Steve Avila. Left tackle will either go to former UDFA A.J. Jackson or veteran Joe Noteboom. Center will go to either Brian Allen or Coleman Shelton. Right guard will either go to Shelton, Noteboom, or Tremayne Anchrum.

Is that easy to follow?

Even when Sean McVay picks a starting five, that combination will probably be playing together for the first time next week after he makes his decision.

Seattle opens at home against the Rams, then they travel to Detroit to face the Lions and a top-5 offensive line, then home against the Panthers in Week 3. The story of Carolina’s training camp and preseason is actually not top pick Bryce Young, but the OL’s inability to do anything positive in front of him.

One of the biggest concerns, apparently, is the poor play by left tackle Ikem Ekwonu. He and Evan Neal, a right tackle on the Giants, will always be the two tackles picked ahead of Charles Cross. Quarterbacks get all the attention, but it can be just as fun to follow which offensive tackles end up being the best of their respective classes.

The Seahawks play the Giants on the road in Week 4.

Did Seahawks blow their chance with Ethan Pocic?

One more note from this clip: Lombardi talks about how the Browns have an elite offensive line that was finally brought together by center Ethan Pocic. What went wrong in Seattle? Finally the team seems to hit a home run by drafting a center, but the score goes to the Browns.

I guess you could put some blame on Tom Cable, but he was only Pocic’s offensive line coach for one year prior to being replaced by Mike Solari.

Can Russ run Intermittent Faster?

Checking back on an old friend, it was interesting to hear that Russell Wilson has lost 15 lbs in the offseason. And the way that he did it? Intermittent fasting.

As many of you know, I’ve been intermittent fasting for the last 4.5 years and this may be the first time I’ve heard an NFL player say that he’s doing it to lose weight and stay in shape.

But the biggest question is, “Did Russell Wilson gain 15 lbs after he was traded to Denver?”

Scratch that, the biggest question is, “If he’s saying he lost 15 lbs, doesn’t that probably mean that he actually lost 30?”

49ers collapse?

If you want to get hyped up once a day, I recommend watching Grant Cohn’s training camp reports from Niners training camp. I don’t like using the word “troll” because it’s over-used and it ends up being the “calling someone crazy” of the Internet. It’s the same thing as calling any article that you dislike “clickbait” instead of the articles that are actually clickbait.

Is Cohn a “troll”? To be a troll, I would have to believe that Cohn doesn’t actually believe everything he says about the 49ers, that he’s just trying to get a rise out of people. That’s what trolling is. “I’m only going to say what I think will upset you and waste your time today by you being upset.” That’s the subtext of everything said by a troll. My read on Cohn is that he really thinks that Kyle Shanahan is an overrated coach and that quarterback situation is a mess, so I can’t say that he’s a troll by my definition.

BUT EVEN IF HE IS A TROLL, IT’S JUST AS ENTERTAINING.

Colin Cowherd’s reason for the Seahawks winning the NFC West

You don’t need to watch the video, I’ll tell you: Because Geno Smith and Pete Carroll are the best QB-HC combination in the division from last season. And by “best” I mean that Colin is going by 2022 passing yards.

And this has been another, “Here’s 8 more minutes of your life” segment from Colin Cowherd.