Russell Wilson in Shane Waldron’s offense, Jamal Adams’ deal top Seahawks camp to-do list
In all of Russell Wilson’s nine previous NFL summers, training camp meant renewal. Refreshment.
Not this summer.
Shane Waldron has replaced Brian Schottenheimer as Wilson’s and the Seahawks’ new offensive coordinator. Waldron, 41, is the former passing game coordinator and tight ends coach for the division-rival Los Angeles Rams. He is the third play caller Wilson has had in 10 years leading Seattle’s offense.
Waldron’s arrival to make the Seahawks’ offense quicker, more varied and more based on creative runs is the largest change Wilson has had from one season to the next in the 32-year-old quarterback’s NFL career.
Seattle and coach Pete Carroll drafted Wilson in 2012 and made him their starter from Week 1 of his rookie year. Darrell Bevell was Wilson’s play caller then, and for the QB’s first seven seasons. Schottenheimer arrived for 2018. Schottnheimer said about 35% of his offense was new for Wilson and the Seahawks, that he merged into the team’s offensive ways more than they changed for him.
Not so with Waldron.
Carroll hired him in January to be a first-time play caller to reduce the frequency of Wilson getting hit and sacked. Waldron is here to increase the pressure on defenses that pressured and dictated to Seattle’s offense by the end of last season.
The Seahawks have three other main tasks to complete in training camp that begins Wednesday through preseason practices that run through three exhibition games to the season opener Sept. 12 at Indianapolis.
- Jamal Adams’ new contract
- Duane Brown’s future
- Finding new starting cornerbacks
The most pressing task is Wilson and the offense adjusting to Waldron’s new ways.
“We have some nuances across the board that really challenge the defense,” Wilson said before reporting for the start of his 11th Seahawks training camp. “Using the whole field. Really expanding the offense. Using everybody as much as possible in different formations and different looks and different tempos and all that.
“Obviously, the tempo part of it is something that is real.”
It’s not that the Seahawks are going to be going no-huddle throughout games, though many Seattle fans want that to give almost full control to Wilson at his often-improvisational best.
The emphasis on tempo already showed during offseason workouts and minicamp practices in June through quicker huddling. Running to the line of scrimmage. Quicker snaps, before the defense can adjust. Quicker routes by receivers.
DK Metcalf, in particular, spent much of 2020 running 40-yard go, post and flag routes, to maximize his speed and size advantages. Problem was, by late last season defenses adjusted by dropping a second safety deep to cover those long routes. Wilson often had to and was trying to throw to Metcalf while the wide receiver’s hulking back was still facing the quarterback.
The 2021 Metcalf will be running more short, quick routes. Sometimes they will be one or two steps, other times shallow drags across the field barely beyond the line of scrimmage. Sometimes he will run those from outside on line in his familiar “X” alignment. He may be in the slot. He is likely to go in pre-snap motion more from the opposite, “Z” flanker alignment Tyler Lockett has been at more in recent seasons.
Just more of the adjustments Waldron will be putting the Seahawks’ offense.
“Shane brings a really, really cool thought process to it all,” Wilson said.
“The great thing is, we get to go out and practice it and work at it and getting better at it as much as possible. Guys are prepared. They are smarter than ever.
“We are really ready to roll. I feel really confident about it.
“I’m excited.”
2. Adams’ new contract
Adams was expected to be in training camp when players report Tuesday.
The Seahawks have expected that since they traded for the All-Pro safety last summer.
Adams, 25, is entering the final year of the contract Seattle inherited from the New York Jets. The Seahawks traded two first-round draft choices and veteran starter Bradley McDougald for him 12 months ago.
Adams is set to earn $9.86 million this year. Since the day they traded a king’s ransom (by NFL and Seattle draft guru GM John Schneider’s standards) for him, the Seahawks have been budgeting to make Adams the league’s richest safety. That means $16 million or more per season, beginning in 2022.
Adams set an NFL record for defensive backs with 9-1/2 sacks last season, his debut in Seattle. That likely upped his asking price. It forced Schneider and Seahawks executive salary-cap planner Matt Thomas to consider how much more above that $16 million per year to pay Adams to address his premium, unique skill as a blitzing pass rusher.
Thing is, Carroll doesn’t want Adams blitzing as frequently in 2021 as he had to in the first half of the 2020 season. Seattle’s defense had next-to-no pass-rushing threat until the team traded for Cincinnati Pro Bowl end Carlos Dunlap in October. Dunlap revitalized the pass rush, and Carroll used Adams more in coverage to help a unit that was giving up league records for passing yards through the first two months of last season.
Dunlap is re-signed and back for the pass rush. So is fellow end Benson Mayowa, plus former 49ers pass rushers Aldon Smith and Kerry Hyder. Alton Robinson is likely to have a larger role after an impressive rookie season with limited snaps. Fellow end L.J. Collier is working into a outside-inside hyrbid role as a pass rusher in hopes of becoming worthy of Seattle’s first-round pick in 2019.
The plan of Carroll and defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. is all those pass rushers up front reduce the need for Adams to take as many chances blitzing and leaving the Seahawks’ back door open to huge pass plays in 2021.
Adams can rightly counter that he set his league record for sacks last season while so injured he needed multiple surgeries, on his shoulder and broken fingers, this winter. Imagine, his side is saying, what he will be fully healthy.
Adams stayed away from all of the Seahawks’ offseason workouts. Carroll excused him from the mandatory three-day minicamp last month, to tend to what the coach said were personal matters.
That is the give and take in negotiations that has kept Adams from having signed a contract before training camp begins. That, and the fact the last six weeks every NFL player, coach, GM and executive have hung “Gone Fishing” signs on office doors and disappeared for the quietest time of the league year, every year.
Look for Adams in camp Tuesday, on the field Wednesday, and him signing a new deal above $16 million per season in the first weeks—if not days—of camp.
It’s why the Seahawks traded for him in the first place, to have him past his Jets rookie contract.
3. Addressing Duane Brown
Entering 2021, the Seahawks were appreciating 14-year-veteran left tackle Duane Brown entering the final year of his contract.
His standout, Pro Bowl career has included a Seahawks contract extension after the team traded with Houston in 2017 to make him Wilson’s back-side protector.
Then this offseason, Carroll acknowledged Brown let the team know he wants to play beyond his ending contract—beyond his 37th birthday next August, in fact.
Brown is scheduled to earn $10 million in base pay plus $1.35 million in per-game and other bonuses in this final year of the $34.5 million extension he signed with Seattle in 2018. His $13.3 million salary-cap charge for this year is the team’s third-highest, behind Wilson ($32 million) and Bobby Wagner ($17.1 million).
Yet as usually happens in the NFL, a top veteran contract signed three years ago is outdated. Few in football would try to argue Brown is not one of the 10 best left tackles in the league. He’s been that for a decade. Yet he is only 16th among NFL left tackles in average value per year entering 2021.
Arizona’s D.J. Humphries is 10th in the league in average earned per year at $14.58 million. Humphries is eight years younger than Brown. He signed his three-year deal with the Cardinals in 2020, two years after Brown re-signed with the Seahawks.
The Seahawks used one of their team-record-low three picks in this spring’s draft on 6-foot-8 Stone Forsythe. The left tackle from Florida is here to learn during his rookie year under Brown and perhaps take over at left tackle when Brown retires.
With arms as wide as sewer pipes and shoulders as broad as I-405, Brown in the last year has taken up more yoga and stretching pre- and post-workouts. He’s said that has given him a new vitality and renewed energy for the game he’s been playing since before he was at Hermitage High School in Richmond, Virginia, at the turn of this century.
To keep him refreshed last season, Carroll gave Brown most mid-week practices off. So missing three days in shorts and helmets in June, or even practices in training camp into August, isn’t going to matter. Just so long as Brown is at left tackle when the Seahawks open the season at Indianapolis.
“He’s a remarkable player and a remarkable athlete,” Carroll said. “He takes great care of himself and has given himself to have an extended career beyond what most guys can make it.
“We love him. He’s a big part of what we’re doing. And we’re counting on him being with us. We’ll look down the road together, and we’ll see what’s the right thing to do coming up. He’s just been a great part of our program. His leadership. His toughness. What he stands for as a man. He’s just a remarkable guy.
“So we would love for him to be with us.
“If he wants to keep playing, we want him to keep playing.”
For Seattle. Beyond 2021.
Expect that to be next on the team’s to-do list after Adams’ new deal, perhaps done before the opener.
4. Find new starting cornerbacks
They might already have them.
Seattle lost Shaquill Griffin to Jacksonville in free agency this offseason. They lost Quinton Dunbar to season-ending knee surgery late in 2020 then to Detroit in free agency.
When Dunbar’s chronic knee pain became to much to play through anymore last November, D.J. Reed emerged. The 49ers’ injury-waiver throwaway last summer earned Dunbar’s starting cornerback job with aggressiveness on passes in the air and against ball carriers. He has a chip of his shoulder that Carroll loves.
Reed, frankly, has earned the right cornerback spot, at least entering this training camp.
He’s all in for the Seahawks in 2021. So much so, he said he’s put aside his questions about getting the COVID-19 vaccine and gotten vaccinated. He said he did so to not put his team at a competitive disadvantage under the NFL’s coronavirus policy for this season—though he’s not sure how he feels about that.
So who will replace Griffin?
The Seahawks drafted Tre Brown, the former Oklahoma cornerback. They have former starter Tre Flowers entering the final year of his rookie deal.
And Seattle signed former 49ers starter Ahkello Witherspoon to a one-year deal this spring. His $4 million guaranteed suggests he isn’t going to get paid to sit on the bench.
Witherspoon fits the prototype of a Carroll cornerback for the Seahawks. He’s long, 6-foot-3, with 33-inch arms.
Witherspoon and Griffin are the same age, 25. They were in the same 2017 draft class.
Weeks before the 2017 draft, when the Seahawks were looking to add cornerbacks for their post-Legion of Boom secondary, Carroll and Schneider met with Witherspoon. That was after Witherspoon, at the University of Colorado, played Richard Sherman’s pressing style.
They selected Griffin instead in the third round of that ‘17 draft. That was 30-some picks after San Francisco took Witherspoon, at the start of that third round.
This story was originally published July 26, 2021 at 1:51 PM.
