Russell Wilson all in learning Shane Waldron’s new Seahawks offense: ‘It’s super complex’
All the drama and made-up stories about where Russell Wilson allegedly was going to play this year ignored what he is actually doing—and where he is actually playing.
The Seahawks’ quarterback is going to be running a new offense in Seattle.
It got lost, quickly, amid the manufactured drama surrounding Wilson this offseason. But Wilson helped shepherd first-time offensive coordinator Shane Waldron onto the Seahawks’ staff this winter. Since then, through weeks and months of phone calls, online Zoom meetings, then four practices on the field this past week at organized team activities (OTAs), Waldron has been installing new, more-varied formations into Wilson’s offense.
“It’s super complex,” Wilson said Thursday.
“We are going to be able to move people around. We are going to do everything that we want to...
”I really believe in him.”
Tuesday, Wilson spent the first minutes of practice talking at length with his new belief coach while he and teammates stretched around them.
No bond will be more important to Seattle’s 2021 season — to its attempt to break a string of not getting past the divisional round of the NFC playoffs since making the Super Bowl six years ago — than how Wilson and Waldron mesh and operate together.
“We’ve spent a lot of time together talking ball, spending a lot time,” Wilson said. “He loves ball. That’s what I love about it.
“I’m excited about the opportunity.”
Waldron has new, quicker pass plays. Seahawks receivers are running shorter routes. Those wide receivers, tight ends and backs have been moving around, all over the different, varied alignments.
Waldron has the offense doing all this in a hurry. Between plays, from the huddle to the line of scrimmage, everywhere the players turn, it’s hurry, hurry, hurry.
“We have some nuances across the board that really challenge the defense, using the whole field and really expanding the offense,” Wilson said Thursday, following the 10th and final practice of OTAs. “Just using everybody as much as possible, in all different formations and different looks and different tempos.”
The quarterback who loves and has thrived in hurry-up mode throughout his nine NFL and record-setting seasons for Seattle particularly noted Waldon’s pace of play.
“Obviously, the tempo part of it is something that is real,” Wilson said.
Waldron, 41 (nine years older than Wilson), is a first-time NFL coordinator and play caller. He broke into coaching out of college as an intern in 2002 with Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots. He was coach Sean McVay’s passing-game coordinator last season for the Los Angeles Rams. Before that, he was the tight-ends coach for Seattle’s NFC West rivals in L.A. that have won six of the last eight meetings between the teams. That includes the Rams beating the Seahawks 30-20 with a backup quarterback in Seattle in the NFC wild-card playoffs this past January.
Coach Pete Carroll’s idea in firing Brian Schottenheimer over what the team called “philosophical differences” days after that game and hiring Waldron was to import the Rams’ more run-based, quicker-passing offense in Seattle.
A quicker pass game
One of the primary ways the Seahawks are addressing Wilson’s stated frustration from February of “getting hit too much” is by changing the passing scheme. Waldron is seeking to run the ball more and have Wilson release the ball on passes more quickly this season. DK Metcalf, Tyler Lockett, top rookie draft pick D’Wayne Eskridge and new tight end Gerald Everett (whom Waldron coached with the Rams) are going to be moving around formations as outside and inside receivers on routes shorter and more horizontal than Metcalf and Lockett have been running in Seattle for years.
Metcalf didn’t set a Seahawks record with 1,303 yards receiving last year, at almost 16 yards per catch, by running one-step hitch routes and crossers dragging across the field 2 yards past the line of scrimmage. But he and Lockett will be running those this year.
Waldron has stressed the need for balance on offense.
The last two seasons, Schottenheimer relied more on Wilson throwing deep down the field, and went 11-5 and 12-4 in the last two regular seasons. Seattle was 52%-48% pass-rush in 2019, 58%-42% in 2020. The Seahawks’ 411 rushing attempts last year were their second-lowest since Carroll’s initial, tear-the-team-down season of 2010. The 2017 Seahawks ran 409 times.
Last season, the Seahawks were throwing nearly two-thirds of the time in September into October, particularly after top two running backs Chris Carson and Carlos Hyde got hurt.
“We are going to be a balanced offense,” Waldron said when Carroll hired him in February, “that’s going to have that ability to create explosive plays with that attacking mindset. ...
“The balanced approach is really how I want to view this thing.”
That balance isn’t just by running the ball more with Carson returning as Seattle’s lead back on a new two-year, $14.7 million contract, and Rashaad Penny back from reconstructive knee surgery for the final season of his deal. It’s also to throw quicker, shorter passes based on the run. That’s to help out Seattle’s offensive line that’s been porous against the Rams in the division and the best defenses in the league for years. It’s also to use the tight end more—more than the 25 receptions Seahawks tight ends caught in 2020.
The aim is to be more varied, so defenses can’t just sit back in two-deep coverage as they did to end this past season and totally neutralize Wilson and Seattle’s offense. The Seahawks led the league in passing against single-high, one-safety-deep coverage in the first half of the 2020 season. They malfunctioned out of the playoffs in one game to ruin a 12-4 season and division title against two-deep coverage after that.
“We’ll have a great mixture of everything,” Wilson said.
“The good thing is, we can do it all.
“Shane brings a great versatility. Something that I love about him is he really understands the game in all aspects of it, situationally. He’s been at a lot of different places, a lot of successful places. With Shane, being with the Rams, being with the Redskins, being with the Patriots, he brings a lot of perspective.”
Wilson says Waldron’s fresh approach doesn’t end with Xs and Os.
“Shane brings a really, really cool thought process to it all,” Wilson said.
“Guys are really prepared. We are smarter than ever. We are ready to roll.
“I feel really confident about it. So, I’m excited.”
About that offensive line...
While the formations and pass plays are going to be different, the men blocking for them will be largely the same.
The plan is they shouldn’t be having to protect Wilson for as long this year.
The offensive line that was in front of Wilson while he again was among the league’s most sacked QBs last season is mostly unchanged. The Seahawks traded with the Raiders to get veteran Gabe Jackson to be their new right guard. They are moving 2020 rookie right guard Damien Lewis to the left guard. Last season’s fill-in starter Kyle Fuller is fighting 2020 center Ethan Pocic for that job in 2021. Left tackle Duane Brown, who skipped all the OTAs, is entering the final year of his contract at age 35. Brandon Shell returns at right tackle after an impressive Seattle debut in 2020.
A main reason Carroll wanted Wilson and the approximately 50 veterans who joined Wilson and Brown in skipping the first six OTAs to show up for the last few was to get prepared for next week’s mandatory minicamp, Tuesday through Thursday. Particularly, Carroll wanted the offense to install Waldron’s schemes on the field as much as possible before training camp, and with the guys who are going to be running it. For the first six OTAs third- and fourth-string quarterbacks Danny Etling and Alex McGough ran the offense.
That was when Wilson backup Geno Smith and Seattle’s veterans chose to, as co-captain Bobby Wagner put it Thursday, redefine the meaning of “voluntary” workouts in the NFL.
The OTAs and the coming week’s minicamp are the latest steps in Wilson’s process of learning with Waldron. The QB says that process has refreshed him entering his 10th season.
That, after all the offseason drama, is indeed refreshing for the Seahawks.
“I’m excited, man. I’m more excited than ever,” Wilson said.
“I’m here, I’m ready to roll...I feel faster. I feel stronger. I feel better than ever. I feel more dangerous than ever.
“You know what heals all things? Winning.”
This story was originally published June 11, 2021 at 6:40 AM.
