Rave reviews for Shane Waldron’s new Seahawks offense. Here’s what it looks like so far
Think Russell Wilson’s—and thus the Seahawks’—biggest problem is Pete Carroll inserting too many of his prehistoric ideas into Seattle’s offense?
Well, the coach has news for you.
Carroll has by all accounts let first-time NFL offensive coordinator Shane Waldron install and run Seattle’s remade, up-tempo, quicker-passing system all offseason.
“I have not gotten in his way, because he has such command of what he’s doing,” Carroll said Thursday at the end of the team’s three-day, mandatory minicamp. It’s the Seahawks’ last time together until training camp begins July 27.
“He knows how it fits together. And he’s been able to orchestrate the teaching process in a way that’s allowed us to do quite a few things this offseason.”
Each day of 10 organized team activities on the field (Wilson and most of the offense’s veterans participated in the last four), Waldron stood intently watching, talking plays into his hand-held radio to Wilson’s helmet speaker. Waldron stood behind huddles with his white Seahawks cap pulled down close to his eyes. He wore long, all team-blue sweatpants and matching pullover, no matter the weather.
Early in Thursday’s practice under warm sun along Lake Washington, Waldron lined up across the line from Wilson, Geno Smith, Danny Etling and Alex McGough. The play caller imitated a free-rushing defensive end crashing. That was to simulate the need for the quarterback to make “hot” reads and get the ball out immediately.
Waldron, not quarterbacks coach Austin Davis, put Wilson and the backup QBs through their position drills during OTAs and minicamp. For those sessions, Waldron usually pulled DK Metcalf, Tyler Lockett and top rookie draft pick D’Wayne Eskridge out of wide-receiver drills to join the quarterbacks. Waldron emphasized getting the ball out of Wilson’s hands quickly to his receivers on noticeably short routes.
Wilson callled Waldron’s new offense “super complex.”
“We are going to be able to move people around,” Wilson said. “We are going to do everything that we want to.”
Lockett, the wide receiver who signed his third Seahawks contract in March worth $69 million with $37 million guaranteed, said he’s been “picking the brain” of Waldron this month.
“I think he’s very brilliant. The things that he brings to our team is going to really help us out, a lot,” Lockett said.
“He’s a coordinator that wants to learn. It’s really cool when you have that. I’ve had that with the others (Darrell Bevell before Schottenheimer). ...
“He’s been embraced well. I think we’ve given him the freedom to be who he’s always been.”
Lockett credits himself, Wilson and their veteran teammates for being open to Waldron’s new ideas.
“We’ve allowed ourselves to learn,” Lockett said, “to be able to sit down and say, ‘You teach us. What is it that we are missing? What is it that we need to know? How can we get better?’’—and being able to give him that free range to really be able to bring what he wants to bring in order to make us great.”
Wilson and the Seahawks set team records for points scored, pass completions and touchdown throws in 2020. Wilson’s 4,212 yards last season was 7 short of his team record for yards passing. Seattle went 12-4 and won the NFC West. They advanced to the playoffs for the eight time in nine years last season.
But the team hasn’t gotten past the divisional round since Seattle’s second and last Super Bowl, at the end of the 2014 season. Carroll is convinced the 2020 Seahawks wasted a 12-win season and first NFC West title in four years with a first-round playoff loss to Waldron’s Rams because they threw the ball too much. Defenses over the latter half of the season stayed in two-safety-deep coverages. Foes did not need to play Seattle more honestly between pass and run.
That’s why Waldron is here, and Schottenheimer is not.
Lockett described the Seahawks’ accepting Waldron this way: “Instead of us acting like we got it together, instead of us acting like we’ve been here before, we’ve always been to the playoffs this many times—instead of acting you need to follow our lead, I think we’ve done a really great job of being humble and learning how to follow his lead.”
Waldron, 41, is a native Pacific Northwesterner. He was a huge Trail Blazers fan growing up in Portland. He was the tight-ends coach then passing-game coordinator with the Los Angeles Rams from 2017 through last season.
He is Seattle’s fourth offensive coordinator since Carroll took over the Seahawks in 2010. But this is as wholesale a change in system as Carroll and Wilson have had in their decade together with Seattle.
What it is
The only offense Waldron has coordinated full-time before now was at Buckingham Browne & Nichols School, a day school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. That was in 2011.
During OTAs and minicamp, his system looked a whole lot more intricate than Buckingham Browne & Nichols School’s.
The Seahawks showed more varied formations compared to their recent seasons. The new scheme showed more pre-snap shifting and motion. The overall pace was quicker — not necessarily being in no-huddle modes between plays more often, but in running from plays to the huddle, breaking the huddle more quickly, running up to the line and snapping quickly.
Two words describe the new offense so far: “tempo” and “variation.”
Seahawks receivers were often arrayed in bunches, outside and in the slot—like the Rams.
Also like L.A.: more uses of multiple and widely arrayed tight ends, plus a lot of quick, horizontal routes across formations. That’s to challenge the defense’s speed in recognizing and reacting to receivers and plays.
“My approach, philosophically, is to get all 11 guys (on offense) involved,” Waldron said.
The pass patterns were mostly shorter than the 40-plus yard go and post routes Metcalf and Lockett often ran in 2020. The receivers gained a team-record 1,300 and 1,000 yards receiving, respectively, doing that.
The new offense includes a lot more option routes, on-the-fly decisions during plays by the receivers that Wilson must accurately read. Lockett calls that “taking what the defense gives us,” rather than holding onto the ball longer and forcing throws into coverage, as became the norm last season.
A defender is giving Metcalf room on the goal line? Instead of running that called fade route to the back corner of the end zone to out-leap a physically inferior cover man, Metcalf is more likely to take two chop steps and cut inside him on a simple, improvised, two-step route into the void for a touchdown.
Lockett and Metcalf said they’ve been running routes this spring that are new not only to the Seahawks but to the Rams, and to the NFL defenses that have scouted them for years.
“We have more freedoms to do a lot of stuff. It’s a lot different than in the six years that I’ve been here,” Lockett said.
Metcalf said Waldron is “always coming up with new ways to try to get his play-makers the ball.”
Carroll hired Waldron to base the offense more on the run, though that didn’t show up in OTAs and the minicamp. It rarely does in shorts and helmets and no contact, with linemen not really blocking defenders. It especially didn’t show up this month. Lead rusher Carson was excused by Carroll for the birth of the running back’s baby. Number-two back Rashaad Penny sat out following clean-up knee surgery this offseason.
The Seahawks’ offensive linemen should not have to pass block in Waldron’s quicker-passing system for as long as they had to last season for Wilson’s long-developing deep throws — too many in Carroll’s mind. Wilson got sacked 48 times in 16 games last year. That was tied for third-most sacks taken in the NFL.
What balance means
In their 2013 Super Bowl-winning season, with Bevell as coordinator plus run-game coordinator Tom Cable calling the offense, the Seahawks were 51% pass and 49% run. They returned to the Super Bowl the following season running 54% of the time and throwing it 46%.
Schottenheimer began his play-calling tenure for Carroll in Seattle running the ball 56% of the time, higher than in the Seahawks’ Super Bowl years. Seattle led the NFL in rushing that ‘18 season. The team finished 10-6 and lost at Dallas in the wild-card round of the playoffs.
During the ‘19 and ‘20 seasons, Schottenheimer relied more on Wilson throwing deep down the field. Seattle went 11-5 and 12-4 those last two regular seasons. The Seahawks were 52%-48% pass-rush in 2019, 58%-42% last season. Their 411 rushing attempts in 2020 were their second-fewest since Carroll’s initial, tear-the-team-down season of 2010. The 2017 Seahawks ran 409 times.
The “balance” Carroll and Waldron keep mentioning is more complicated than just running the ball more. It also means quicker, shorter, play-action passes based on that run game. It’s also designed to use the tight end with the wide receivers more—more than the 25 receptions that was the most by a Seahawks tight end last year.
Gerald Everett, coached by Waldron with the Rams until January, and Will Dissly are primed for many more tight-two-end sets in passing situations than Seattle’s had in years.
“I’m really excited about the tight-end position,” Carroll said.
The aim is to be more varied, so defenses can’t sit back in two-deep coverage as they did to end this past season to 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, when teams honored their run more.
Carroll’s view is he’s not a run-first coach. He’s a run-based one. He wants to use more of the running game to give the offensive line a better chance to protect Wilson, and for Wilson to have Metcalf and Lockett open more often down the field, so Seattle can maintain its explosiveness.
“Every time I mention the running game people go nuts,” Carroll said Thursday, accurately.
“We are going to be a balanced football team, again.
”When we are at our best, we can run the football and be very explosive.”
A teacher
Waldron is here because Carroll fired Schottenheimer in January. That was days after Wilson and the offense finished going splat over the final month of last season, most glaringly in that home-playoff loss to the Rams.
Carroll’s biggest issue with Schottenheimer was the offense not countering defenses dropping a second safety deep into coverage late last season, to stop Metcalf’s and Lockett’s deep routes. Instead, Wilson and the 2020 Seahawks kept throwing deep, trying to jam square pegs into round holes.
This spring, it’s been smooth, new round pegs into shiny, new round holes.
The fit has impressed the head man.
Carroll said Waldron’s deep knowledge of the intricacies of his offense plus his communication skills at effectively and efficiently teaching them have the players farther ahead in learning and installing the system entering than he expected entering training camp.
“I know it, you can hear it from the players: they are impressed with him,” Carroll said. “He’s just left them with a really good impression of his command, his verbiage...
“He’s packaged the teaching part of it. I say that because there are a lot of codes that they have to know and there’s a lot of systems within the format that’s in advance of where we’ve been in years past. ...
“Some of the guys say it’s easier than it’s been in the past—and we are doing more.”
This story was originally published June 18, 2021 at 7:44 AM.
