The Seattle Seahawks defense will look very different this fall under new head coach Mike McDonald, who brings a cutting-edge strategy to the Pacific Northwest after two highly successful seasons as the defensive coordinator for the Baltimore Ravens.
Seahawks are busy learning Mike McDonald's 'really creative' defense
How different is that defense from the one Pete Carroll coached in Seattle?
“I think the biggest difference between Mike McDonald becoming the Seahawks head coach and the success we had over the last 14 years with Pete at the helm is the amount and intensity of defense this team is able to play,” former NFL quarterback Brock Huard said on Seattle Sports' Brock & Salk on Monday's Blue 88.
Hurd pointed to a key detail that emerged during McDonald's news conference last Wednesday after the second of Seattle's 10 overtime practices, when McDonald said about 20% of the defense was in place.
“They're in the third phase of on-field activity with 20 percent of the defense participating,” Hurd said. “I think it's fair to say by the third phase of OTAs with (former defensive coordinators) Clint Hurd, Ken Norton Jr. and Pete Carroll, 100 percent of the defense will be participating (by a lot).”
“(Carroll's defense) had a bunch of different things, blitz packages, special packages, nickel packages, so maybe it wasn't 100 percent. Maybe it was 60 percent, 70 percent. But 20 percent? And when you hear (current Seahawks players) talk about how much horsepower (McDonald's defense) needs to make those checks, from a football intelligence standpoint, you get it.”
One of the players who spoke about McDonald's strategy was Seahawks new safety Rayshawn Jenkins, an eight-year NFL veteran.
“It's a really creative, really fun defense, but it requires a lot of attention to detail,” Jenkins said after an OTA practice last Wednesday. “… It's definitely been a challenge for me in terms of studying the game internally.”
As detailed in a piece for The Athletic earlier this month, McDonald's tactics feature a unique level of positional versatility and compatibility. To achieve that, Nguyen explained, McDonald ties his blitzes to patterns rather than defensive fronts.
As a result, players learn entire pressure patterns rather than just their individual roles, which allows them to better understand what their teammates are doing and ultimately allows them to switch positions and apply pressure from different players and places on the field.
“Will they play well in Year 1 and get off to a good start right away? Probably still in the works,” Hurd said, “but the amount of defense will be very different than what we've seen before, which is another thing, by the way, that they've been pretty successful at for a long time. There's no one way to do it, but it's going to be very, very different as far as the amount of defense.”
You can listen to the full conversation between Bullock and Salk on the podcast at this link or in the player near the top of this article. Tune in to Bullock and Salk weekdays from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. or find the podcast in the Seattle Sports App.
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