Seahawks’ Doug Baldwin said all this running is ‘a winning style.’ And it should continue vs. Chargers

Doug Baldwin is on board.

Even though the freight train that’s been the Seahawks’ offense for the last month has been rolling with the run, not with passes to him.

Baldwin is all in and why not? The Seahawks (4-3) have won four of their last five games entering Sunday’s test against the Los Angeles Chargers (5-2) at CenturyLink Field.

He’s OK with the change in the offense that has seen if go from passing 73 percent of the time in two losses to begin the season to running it 69 percent of the time last weekend while dominating Detroit. Why would a No. 1 wide receiver in the pass-a-rama NFL be so supportive of running the ball instead of passing it?

“(It’s) a winning style,” Baldwin said.

Baldwin plays a position known for divas who are concerned about their stats (and status). But he grew up in the NFL with the 2011-15 Seahawks. The ones with Marshawn Lynch as their punishing lead back. From 2012-15 those powerful Seahawks were third, fourth, first and third in the league in rushing offense in consecutive seasons with Lynch running over defenders.

Seattle went to the playoffs in each of those seasons. The team went to consecutive Super Bowls and won its only NFL championship in that span of elite rushing in this passing league.

And now, this season, Baldwin is seeing something similar. The Seahawks are a top five rushing team, averaging 160.2 yards per game their last five games. Who would have thought having an offensive line that was returning 80 percent of its starters, starters who until six weeks ago hadn’t proven in years that it could run block consistently, would be so good?

“I never envisioned that we’d have this much success,” Baldwin said.

So what’s different now from 2016’s and ‘17’s runs to nowhere?

Three big changes.

1. Carroll firing Tom Cable. Cable was an assistant head coach who had an unusual amount of authority over scouting, drafting and signing outside offensive linemen before ever coaching them in his more finesse, zone-blocking scheme. Carroll hired veteran, man-on-man blocking schemer Mike Solari to replace Cable.

2. Replacing fired offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell with more run-first play caller Brian Schottenheimer.

3. Signing road grader D.J. Fluker, a notorious run blocker who struggled in pass blocking for four years with the Chargers and last year with Solari’s New York Giants.

“I think the game plan that we put together in terms of where guys are blocking and how they are blocking is phenomenal,” Baldwin said. “We are creating each week something better. And then you’ve got the guys who have the talent in the backfield to do it.

“So when you have that, simply put, you have a winning style. And I’m glad that they are on my team.”

This is not to say Baldwin is all cool with all of this run stuff all the time.

After all, he’s the guy who in a home game against Philadelphia in November 2016 flipped off Bevell from the huddle in the middle of the field when Bevell called for Baldwin to throw a touchdown pass to Wilson in the red zone. Baldwin said after that game his gesture was for Bevell robbing him of the opportunity to catch a touchdown pass from Wilson.

Baldwin doesn’t get paid to throw passes, either.

Last month the Seahawks threw the ball 21 times plus two sacks and ran it 32 times in the 33-31 loss to the unbeaten Rams. Baldwin had one, unintended target that day, for 1 yard.

After the game, he angrily and briefly answered a couple questions in the locker room. He called fellow receivers Tyler Lockett and David Moore “beasts.” And he walked out into the Seattle Sunday evening.

“There’s going to be other times when the competitor in him is going to come out,” Schottenheimer said, diplomatically, “and we’ll have some... dialogue on the sidelines.”

The coordinator then laughed at his choice of “dialogue.”

Of course, the Seahawks lost that Rams game. Baldwin not getting passes and losing? He’s not all in on that.

But he was bullish on the room in the locker room at Ford Field after last weekend’s win at Detroit, a game in which the Seahawks ran it 42 times and threw just 17 passes, when Baldwin caught just two of Wilson’s 14 completions.

He praised Schottenheimer for calling so many handoffs. Is that rare?

“The answer to the question is probably yes,” said Schottenheimer, who has been an NFL coordinator for 11 years and assistant in the league for 19. “If you look around the league, most No. 1 receivers, it’s about catches, attempts, things like that. I think Doug is a competitor that wants to win and he sees the success that we’re having right now.

“The game plan wasn’t to go into Detroit and throw it 17 times. That wasn’t the game plan. The way we were running it, some of the success we were having — we got the lead, obviously, we were able to kind of hold them off for a little bit and you kind of go with the flow.

“But for him to say that, it shows you, No. 1, that, yes he’s been around a program like Stanford that had success running the ball. Obviously, when they were here the Super Bowl years, there was a lot of success running the football. But it shows you he wants to win.

“I think that’s cool. I think that’s really cool that Doug feels that way.”

How much pride does Baldwin take in being the antithesis of the NFL diva wide receiver who wants every ball that finds its way onto any field?

Baldwin laughed at being billed an “anti-diva” for promoting more running over passing.

“I don’t know if I take pride in that,” he said. “Again, it’s the way I was raised.

“If I was any other way my mom would be mad at me.”

Wilson thinks sometime soon Baldwin will have his moment.

The quarterback says history tells him that Baldwin will have a string of games like he had at the end of 2015, when Baldwin tied for the NFL season lead with 14 touchdown receptions. The following year he tied Bobby Engram’s team record for a season with 94 catches.

“The great thing is, we haven’t really even gotten him quite fully going yet,” Wilson said. “When we get him going, I’m excited about that part of it, too. He’s a real threat. He’s a superstar in the league.

“So that’s another thing we want to be able to catch fire with and believe that we can do that. I always go back to 2015 when Doug and I got into a hot streak, so I always say ‘Why not?’ That might happen soon.”

That might happen Sunday.

The Chargers have allowed a whopping 32 pass completions of at least 20 yards in less than half a season. They are allowing the second-highest average of such big plays per game, 4.6 (Kansas City is allowing 4.75 receptions per game of at least 20 yards). So if form holds in L.A’s secondary, Baldwin, Lockett and Moore may have more room than they’ve had all season to catch Wilson’s passes.

And because of this emphasis and effectiveness of Seattle’s running game, Wilson has been getting the extra time to throw. No more of the constant pressure from pass rushers who previously disregarded the Seahawks’ running the ball because they hardly did, and when they did not for much.

But if Baldwin doesn’t shine against the Chargers? He’s OK with that.

“I mean, this is solid,” Baldwin said of the Seahawks’ basis for offense right now. “I think the Rams game, especially at home, against that good of a team, we were able to get our mojo, if you will. Even though we didn’t win the game, we were still like, ‘OK, we’ve gone up against the best, what they say is the best. We’ve tested ourselves.

“Now we can actually believe that we are good. That’s what we really needed

“And now we are showing that this is who we really are. ... I feel it. There’s a feeling to it, and I feel it much more so (than before).”