By popular demand--and Seahawks need--Marquise Blair gets his chance as new nickel back
Marquise Blair knows you love him.
The hard-hitting, most popular one-year reserve Seahawk around says he’s seen and heard that fans want him to play more.
“Yes, I’ve heard a little bit. But I really don’t be on social media, so I don’t pay much attention to it,” the 23-year-old father of 2-year-old Ezekiel and 1-year-old daughter Ivelle said Sunday before the fourth practice of Seattle’s training camp.
If he succeeds this month in one of Seattle’s more intriguing experiments of this camp, he may blow up Seahawks Twitter.
Just as coach Pete Carroll said he would, Blair has been the first nickel defensive back through the first week of practices. Ugo Amadi, the fourth-round pick from Oregon in 2019 and Seattle’s primary nickel at the end of last season, has been with the second unit so far in camp.
How much experience does the former University of Utah strong and free safety the Seahawks drafted in the second round last year have playing nickel before this?
“None,” Blair said.
“I only played safety.”
Carroll said this month a key to improving his pass defense is finding the right place for Blair. Right now, that’s as the fifth, nickel defensive back in a defense that could play far less base 4-3 defense than it did when it led the league by far in use of base last season.
That is, if Blair masters his new job of getting different calls than he did in Seattle’s base defense last year. Blair is now trying to become a specialized pass defender, more of a man-to-man specialist. Up to now his entire, previous football life has been as a safety equally focused on run fits, tackling and pass coverage, man and zone.
“I feel like I can cover. I feel like I can blitz,” Blair said. “I can fit in run gaps.
“Yeah, just everything that nickel does. ... Just at safety, you think about more run. In nickel, you are thinking they are passing. We are in for the pass.”
It’s for sure a Seahawks experiment. Not just about Blair, but about how much nickel versus base defense Seattle is going to play in 2020.
Because what the Seahawks’ defense did in 2019 didn’t work.
“For the most part, we’ve got to figure out Marquise,” Carroll said.
“He’s the one that’s going to get the opportunity to get in on the slot and do some stuff that puts him in a position to be really active, and be a part of the pressure packaging and some real aggressive part of the play.
“So, that’s cool for him.”
Will it be cool for Seattle’s pass defense this year?
Less nickel lately
The former home of Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor and the Legion of Boom plummeted to 27th in the NFL against the pass last season. Part of the reason was the lack of consistent pressure on quarterbacks up front. Throwers usually had ample time to wait and wait then find holes in the coverage, which will happen eventually against any defense in a league that penalizes any contract between a defender and receiver beyond 5 yards from the line of scrimmage.
Another reason for the porous pass defense in 2019: the Seahawks didn’t trust their nickel back.
In 2017 and ‘18, Carroll loved standout nickel back Justin Coleman and his man coverage on slot receivers so much Seattle stayed out of base 4-3 defense. They were in five defensive backs with two linebackers on more than two-third of all defensive snaps.
That was similar to the rest of the pass-happy league. Nickel has become most teams’ essentially base scheme.
Then Coleman signed in free agency with Detroit before last season. He got $9 million per year, a league-record for a nickel.
Seattle used Akeem King, Kalan Reed and the 5-foot-9 Amadi at nickel during training camp last year. They signed former Cleveland Browns starter Jamar Taylor to compete with them.
The Seahawks dropped from 11th in the NFL in total defense in 2018 to 26th in 2019. Seattle allowed 382 yards and 25 points per game last year. In 2018, with Coleman at nickel on more than 60 percent of their defensive plays, the Seahawks allowed 30 fewer yards and three fewer points per game than they surrendered last season.
In 2019, Seattle played base 4-3 with four defensive backs far more than any other NFL team.
Last season, the league was in base defense with four defensive backs for just 28.2 percent of snaps. Teams were out of base and used five or six defensive backs on 72.8 percent of plays last year, per an analysis by Pro Football Focus.
The Seahawks? They were out of base defense with extra defensive backs just 31.2 percent of the time. Every other NFL team used extra DBs at least 30 percent more than Seattle did in 2019.
Carroll and defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. did that because they trusted veteran, Super Bowl-winning linebackers Bobby Wagner, K.J. Wright and Mychal Kendricks more than they trusted the new guys at nickel.
This month they are trying to find out if they trust can Blair there this year.
A spotty rookie year
Blair wowed coaches and fans in the 2019 preseason opener against Denver. That heightened his already lofty popularity around Seattle.
During the regular season he started three games, but only because starters were hurt in October. Two of Blair’s starts were as a fill-in for injured Bradley McDougald at strong safety. One was when Diggs was still getting over a hamstring injury he had while with Detroit. In Seattle’s win at Atlanta in October, Blair had a team-high 11 tackles.
It appeared Carroll and Norton liked Blair but didn’t trust him—or their rookie first-round pick, defensive end L.J. Collier, for that matter.
Blair played just 21% of the defense’s snaps last season. Collier, who was a healthy scratch for five games of his rookie season, and Blair played just 35.6% of the defense’s snaps combined.
Carroll knows that has to change for the defense to be better in 2020.
After Aaron Rodgers and Green Bay targeted Amadi for key pass completions late to seal Seattle’s playoff loss to the Packers in January, Carroll decided he wanted varied—specifically, bigger—options to compete with Amadi for the nickel job in 2020. More trust in a bigger nickel back could lead Seattle back to playing more nickel and less base defense again this year.
Blair is bigger. He’s going to get the chance to prove whether he’s better.
He isn’t going to be playing safety in 2020. Not unless Jamal Adams, who arrived this month from the Jets in a trade for McDougald and two first-round picks, and Diggs, a standout and Pro Bowl alternate last season, get hurt.
Nickel is his job to lose.
Advice from a legend
To improve from year one to two, Blair sought the counsel of the retired Chancellor this offseason. That is a bit of a nod to Blair’s past more than his present or future.
Chancellor was “The Enforcer,” the NFL’s best at intimidating and annihilating receivers and ball carriers with thudding hits as the strong safety in Seattle’s Super Bowl-winning Legion of Boom in the mid-2010s.
Hard-hitting was what Blair was known for at the University of Utah. He is 6-1. He plays at about 200 pounds. The Pac-12 twice suspended him for what it deemed flagrant and unnecessary blows on receivers. His college defensive coordinator called him “nasty.” When the Seahawks drafted Blair, general manager John Schneider called him “a silent assassin.”
Then Blair did this Chancellor impression in his first preseason game for Seattle:
Yet Chancellor’s advice to Blair does apply to Blair’s new nickel job.
“Stay in the playbook,” Chancellor told Blair.
“And he told me, ‘Don’t move before the ball is smapped. Get lined up, so you know what’s going on,” Blair said.
In a match-up league where offensive coordinators seek to send bigger receivers at smaller, inside backs, Blair doesn’t appear to be moving out of the Seahawks’ nickel job anytime soon.
It’s man on man. And one of Seahawks fans’ favorite men is getting his chance.
“I can cover whoever, I feel like,” I’m comfortable in my man-to-man coverage. ...
“Now, I’m just rollin’.”
