Five issues to watch in Seahawks training camp, starting with: Where’s the pass rush?
If you think you can rush the passer, c’mon down to Seahawks headquarters!
OK, it’s not that bad for Seattle’s defense entering the 2019 season.
But it’s close.
After trading leading sack man Frank Clark this spring (because they didn’t want to pay him the almost $20 million per year they are about to pay Bobby Wagner instead), and after the NFL suspended second-leading pass rusher Jarran Reed this week for this season’s first six games, the Seahawks begin training camp Thursday with Mount Rainier-sized problems pressuring opposing quarterbacks.
It’s the biggest of five key issues to watch during the 22 practices the team has between Thursday and the first regular-season game week to begin September.
1. Where is the pass rush going to come from?
Seattle’s most pressing need is likely to determine whether this team gets back to the playoffs for the seventh time in eight seasons.
Reed had a breakout year last season with 10 1/2 sacks. He will miss games against Ben Roethlisberger, Drew Brees, rookie top-overall pick Kyler Murray, last season’s Super Bowl quarterback Jared Goff and Baker Mayfield, last year’s top NFL draft choice.
Ziggy Ansah was Seattle’s big offseason addition to the pass rush, an outside speed rusher in from Detroit to replace Clark. But Ansah may not practice fully until deep into August, if then. He’s coming off shoulder surgery last year that ended his time with the Lions. The 2015 season was the last time he played as many as 500 snaps (an average of 31 plays per game).
It appears he will be on the active roster practicing on a limited basis to begin camp. That’s an indication the Seahawks think Ansah will be able to ramp up his rehabilitation and football shape in time to be ready for the opening game Sept. 8 against Cincinnati.
Without Ansah and Reed, Seattle has exactly one defensive lineman who’s had as many as 5 1/2 sacks in any NFL season. That’s Cassius Marsh, who had 5 1/2 with San Francisco last season. Seattle brought back its 2014 draft pick on a free-agent contract this offseason. He’s been with the Seahawks, Patriots, 49ers and now Seahawks again since the summer of 2017.
Marsh and Branden Jackson (a part-timer with 1 1/2 sacks for two teams in three NFL seasons) were the starting defensive ends in Seattle’s offseason minicamp last month. That’s not going to keep opposing quarterbacks and offensive coordinators up all nights preparing to play the Seahawks.
Rookie first-round pick L.J. Collier was on the second team at end in the offseason. He was more of an inside, strength pass rusher in college at TCU than a Clark-like outside speed rusher. The Seahawks need his development to accelerate through August.
Same with Rasheem Green. Seattle drafted the USC defensive tackle-end in the third round last year envisioning him as an inside-outside pass-rushing end somewhat like Michael Bennett was in his Pro Bowl years for the Seahawks. But Green had just one sack in 10 games as a rookie. It’s time, starting Thursday when camp begins, for Green to show more.
The man with the most to gain by Reed’s suspension appears to be Nazair Jones. Seattle’s third-round pick in 2017 got snaps over undrafted rookie Poona Ford at defensive tackle last season when Seattle played passing teams. Ford got more of the plays when the Seahawks played running teams. Coaches like the 6-foot-5 Jones batting passes at the line of scrimmage. Reed’s suspension opens a big chance for Jones to win a larger role in 2019.
Jacob Martin, an intriguing rookie with speed off the edge in limited chances last year, and Shaquem Griffin also need to show pass-rushing skills in camp.
Griffin failed last season as a rookie as an off-the-ball linebacker in space trying to read and react. He was overwhelmed starting the season opener at weakside linebacker for injured K.J. Wright. He got benched after one quarter that early-September day in Denver and never really played on defense the rest of the season.
Starting Thursday, coaches plan on using Griffin more in the edge-rushing, on-the-line pass rusher he was while starring for the University of Central Florida two years ago. Seattle needs his speed—anybody’s speed—off the edge to affect quarterbacks this season.
Expect the Seahawks to continue shopping for help for the pas rush as teams release veteran defensive linemen to save money through the end of the preseason. Green Bay did that Wednesday to 2017 Pro Bowl tackle Mike Daniels.
Bottom line: Someone must step up far above previous production, as Reed did last year, for the Seahawks to make the playoffs again this season.
2. The safety pairings.
It will become apparent right away—as in, the first practice of camp Thursday—that Earl Thomas is gone, now playing for the Baltimore Ravens.
It’s mix-and-match time at safety.
Bradley McDougald is coming off offseason knee surgery. Where Seattle’s best cover guy plays depends on the progress of rookie second-round draft choice Marquise Blair.
The Seahawks aren’t convinced Tedric Thompson is the long-term successor to Thomas at free safety. If they were, they wouldn’t have drafted Blair in the second round this spring.
Blair was a ferocious hitter as a college strong safety at Utah, “a silent assassin,” Seahawks general manager John Schneider said. Blair will get a chance through August to hit opposing ball carriers in the four preseason games, a chance to win the strong-safety job. That would put McDougald at free.
Blair, though, is starting camp on the physically-unable-to-perform list following a hamstring injury last month. The team believes he will be practicing sooner than later, but the PUP list is a hedge for roster flexibility in case the problem lingers; only players on PUP to begin camp can be on it and thus exempted from the roster to begin the regular season.
If Blair isn’t ready, the starters could be McDougald and Thompson. Or returning Lano Hill could be the strong safety, with McDougald at free. That’s how Seattle went in the later weeks of last season, until Hill cracked his hip. Hill is beginning camp on the PUP list.
The starting combination at safety will be a daily watch item in camp.
“Bradley really has been the leader and the best communicator for us and just the experience and all of that. And then Hill hasn’t been there, and he made a big push at the end of the year. He’s a guy (we) really think (is) in the mix. So we’re going to have to reserve judgment a little bit in how it’s going to wind up in the starting spots.
“It’s going to be an interesting spot when we come back to camps. We’re going to have to make up a lot of ground there. I think Bradley is scheduled to be fine first day of camp and should be out there going. That’ll be really important. He’ll help us continuity wise. T2 (Thompson) played really well for us all along and been really consistent. So that’s been good.
“But there’s going to be some comp there. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens.”
3. What changes will there be in year two of Russell Wilson with Brian Schottenheimer?
The quarterback and his new offensive coordinator were just getting to know each other this time last year.
Now Schottenheimer has seen how accurately Wilson throws the deep ball—and how many problems this mostly unchanged offensive line has pass protecting without a running game to help it. Seattle has mostly maintained continuity in its starting line from 2018 to ‘19. The only change: signing Mike Iupati from Arizona to start at left guard, after J.R. Sweezy signed with the Cardinals in March. Iupati is what Sweezy was and starting right guard D.J. Fluker is for the Seahawks: a masher, a physical run-blocker.
Pass blocking remains the concern that keeps Schottenheimer and Carroll from throwing the ball all around the yard, as analytics and fans and your dogs and cats all howl Seattle needs to do more.
One of the most revealing things of the millions Carroll said to the media during last year came midseason when the coach acknowledged he overestimated how improved the Seahawks’ O-line would be in pass blocking entering last season. Seattle threw it 73 percent of the time in the first two games, at Denver and at Chicago. Wilson was the most sacked QB in the NFL, 12 times through two games, with a killer interception returned for a touchdown to doom the Seahawks at the Bears. And Seattle was 0-2.
Carroll and Schottenheimer plotted beginning on the flight home from Chicago to run more, to help Wilson and the line by making defenses play the Seahawks more honestly. Seattle ran it more times than anyone and threw it less than anyone in the league, the offense led the league in rushing, Wilson had his most efficient passing season of his career—and the Seahawks returned to the playoffs after a one-season absence in 2017.
“Yeah, it took us a couple of games to find the rhythm and the mix that we wanted to begin the season with. I misevaluated,” Carroll said Oct. 22. “It’s not Brian, at all. I misevaluated a little bit how far we had come in the offseason. And we just needed to reevaluate.”
Seattle wants to throw it deeper this season, to highlight tantalizing rookie receiver DK Metcalf, the star of offseason practices, and to make up for the retirement of smaller, shiftier Doug Baldwin on underneath routes. Carroll said the reason the Seahawks traded up to the end of round two to draft Metcalf and then drafted Gary Jennings from West Virginia in round four was to get bigger and faster at wide receiver and to take more advantage of Wilson’s unique accuracy in throwing deep passes.
To give Wilson the time to do throw deep, let’s see how creative Schottenheimer gets with play-action throws, formations, motion and play calling, while continuing to base the pass off the Seahawks’ preferred run game.
“We want to run the football, be physical. I think we’re the best play-pass team in the league. I really do,” Schottenheimer said last month.
“Russ’s ability to throw the ball deep down the field, that was evident last year. The last eight games, we were, I think, top three or four. He’s just got a great feel for it.”
4. The offensive player no one is talking about now, but may be a lot by September.
Jacob Hollister arrived this offseason in an overlooked trade of a late-round draft choice to New England. The fluid tight end showed in offseason practices speed and versatility. He played tight on the line, in the slot and outside.
He’s what Seattle didn’t have last season at tight end: a dynamic option all over the field.
“We’re really fired up that we got Jacob,” Carroll said last month. “He’s different. This is a different dimension receiver at the tight end spot. He’s feisty and aggressive and sticks his head in there.”
At 6 feet 4, 245 pounds Hollister is not going to be a pounding blocker at tight end for Seattle’s running game. But the Seahawks have Nick Vannett and usual offensive tackle George Fant returning to do that again this season. Will Dissly will likely start camp on the PUP list coming back from patellar-tendon surgery on his knee that ended his impressive rookie season last September. The Seahawks love the former Washington Huskies defensive lineman for his blocking and his receiving.
Hollister could be a new dimension at the position for Seattle. If he continues the 25-year-old from Bend, Ore., and the University of Wyoming continues what he showed in the spring into summer, 31-year-old tight end Ed Dickson and his contract possibly become expendable. Seattle would save $3.55 million if it released him before the season.
5. Which undrafted rookie will emerge?
One always does.
Every summer, a guy no one is talking about in July makes Carroll’s always-compete Seahawks in September and becomes a major contributor by November. From Baldwin and Jermaine Kearse through Thomas Rawls and, last season, Ford, Seattle has been among the NFL leaders in playing undrafted free agents.
This summer’s candidates to emerge including: 345-pound defensive tackle Bryan Mone, to help fix Seattle’s problem of allowing 4.9 yards per rush last season, and 6-foot-5 Jazz Ferguson.
The former top wide-receiver recruit to LSU who washed out to lower-division Northwestern State in Louisiana meets Carroll’s goal of getting bigger and faster at wide receiver. Ferguson, who looks and runs bulkier than Metcalf, will need to show right away in camp he can produce.
This story was originally published July 24, 2019 at 3:36 PM.
