Six Seahawks who have the most to gain this training camp--starting with Russell Wilson
Russell Wilson has a new offense to perfect.
DK Metcalf has the first, big adjustment of his NFL career.
Aldon Smith has his career to revive.
The Seahawks have 90 players in their training camp that begins Wednesday with a first practice on the lakeside fields of team headquarters in Renton.
These half dozen have the most to gain this preseason, before Seattle’s games get real Sept. 12 in the opener at Indianapolis:
1. Wilson going back to school
Shane Waldron is in from the Los Angeles Rams to be Seattle’s new offensive coordinator, to make the Seahawks’ offense quicker, more varied and more based on creative runs.
It’s the largest change Wilson has had from one season to the next in the 32-year-old quarterback’s NFL career.
“It’s super-complex,” Wilson said of Waldron’s offense.
The QB’s schooling accelerates beginning Wednesday.
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. Brian Schottenheimer arrived for 2018. Schottnheimer said then 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. It could be more the other way around, with perhaps the majority of Seattle’s system new to Wilson in 2021.
Carroll hired Waldron 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.
“We have some nuances across the board that really challenge the defense,” Wilson said before reporting Tuesday 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.
“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. A shorter Metcalf
Not in size.
No, he’s still every bit of his hulking 6 feet 4 and 235 pounds towering over every defensive back in camp—and in the league.
But the 23-year-old wide receiver who set the Seattle franchise record with 1,303 yards receiving in 2020 will be running quicker, shorter routes in his third NFL year. That will match the quicker, shorter offense Waldron is installing.
Metcalf is making perhaps the biggest adjustments from 2020 to 2021 in the Seahawks’ new system.
He spent much of last year running 40-yard go, post and flag routes, as Schottenheimer and Wilson sought to maximize Metcalf’s speed and size advantages. But by late last season defenses adjusted. They dropped 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.
“It’s a new offense, so there’s a lot of different new things to learn,” Metcalf said.
“He’s a hungry coach, that’s what I like about him,” Metcalf said of Waldron. “He’s always trying to learn something new, not only about the players, but about the game of football and about offense.
“He’s always coming up with new ways to try to get his playmakers the ball.”
3. Aldon Smith’s latest second chance
The 31-year-old former San Francisco 49ers All-Pro pass rusher and first-round draft choice returned to the league last fall after four years out of it on suspensions.
Seattle signed Smith this spring. He now has the next five weeks to prove he’s worthy of joining re-signed Carlos Dunlap and Benson Mayowa, plus former 49ers end Kerry Hyder, 2019 Seahawks first-round pick L.J. Collier and impressive 2020 rookie Alton Robinson on Seattle’s latest pass-rush remake.
Carroll excused Smith from last month’s three-day, mandatory minicamp while he got into better shape. The team expects Smith on the field Wednesday for the first practice of training camp.
He’s had his charge of alleged battery of a man in Louisiana rescheduled to Aug. 24, ESPN.com’s Brady Henderson reported Tuesday.
The Dallas Cowboys gave up on Smith this offseason after his five sacks in 16 games for them last season. Smith was suspended out of the league for the 2016 through ‘19 seasons following substance-abuse violations, a no-contest plea for domestic violence and false imprisonment and an arrest on charges of driving under the influence and vandalism.
Two days into being a Seahawk, in April, Smith allegedly choked a man into unconsciousness at a coffee shop in the New Orleans suburbs. Smith turned himself in to a county jail in Louisiana. He was charged with second-degree battery.
He was freed on $25,000 bond, pending further investigation and court proceedings.
The NFL and commissioner Roger Goodell reserve the right to punish Smith for the Louisiana incident under their personal-conduct policy, regardless of how the judicial process adjudicates his case.
Carroll’s latest former first-round pick as a reclamation project begins Wednesday. Smith has this training camp to prove he’s: 1.) in shape; and 2.) a changed man off the field enough to help Seattle on it and stay in the league in 2021.
Those are the highest stakes for anyone in the Seahawks’ training camp.
4. Marquise Blair returning, a job is waiting
This time last year, Blair was all over the Seahawks’ practice fields. He was becoming Seattle’s new primary nickel defensive back.
The plan was to have the impressive second-round pick in 2019 from Utah that general manager John Schneider called “a silent assassin” when the Seahawks drafted him as the team’s reason to go to five defensive backs and two linebacker more in 2020.
But in the first half of the season’s second game, in September, Blair tore knee ligaments. He had season-ending surgery.
Bruce Irvin also had season-ending knee surgery that month. The Seahawks had to move veteran K.J. Wright from weakside to strongside linebacker to replace Irvin. Rookie first-round pick Jordyn Brooks became the weakside linebacker. Seattle played far less nickel than it had planned to with Blair. The Seahawks spent the first half of 2020 on pace to break the NFL record for yards passing allowed in a season.
Now Blair is back to full health. Carroll and defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. will find out during training camp if Blair is back to full speed.
If he proves to be, the Seahawks could get back to playing nickel two-third or more of the time, as is more the NFL norm—and as Seattle did until trusted fifth DB Justin Coleman left for $9 million per year in free agency from Detroit before the 2019 season. Since then, Seattle has played more base defense than any team in the pass-a-rama league.
Blair at nickel would lessen the impact of the Seahawks not re-signing Wright, who remains a free agent as camps begin. It would make Brooks and All-Pro Bobby Wagner the two linebackers in nickel, highlighting Brooks’ speed.
It’s the way Carroll wants to play defense.
Blair was five weeks to show whether the Seahawks will in 2021.
5. Tre Flowers
Remember him? Seattle’s starting cornerback in the 2018 and ‘19 seasons?
It’s last call for Carroll’s conversion project from college safety to long, lean Seahawks cornerback. Flowers is entering the final year of his rookie contract. He lost his job last season after Seattle traded with Washington to get Quinton Dunbar in the spring of 2020.
Dunbar lost his job to D.J. Reed in November. Dunbar showed up in Seattle with a chronically pained knee that eventually required season-ending surgery late last year. He signed with the Lions this spring.
Reed has earned the inside track to the starting right cornerback job with his aggressiveness and chip on his shoulder from San Francisco waiving him last summer. But Flowers had been the starting right cornerback opposite Shaquill Griffin. Griffin is now gone, too. He signed with home-state Jacksonville this spring.
In March the Seahawks signed former 49ers starter Ahkello Witherspoon for $4 million guaranteed in 2021. That kind of money doesn’t make sense on the bench. Witherspoon was the first left cornerback during his new team’s minicamp last month.
Flowers has a final chance in training camp and three preseason games beginning Aug. 14 at Las Vegas to win one of those two jobs from Reed or Witherspoon.
6. Kyle Fuller’s opportunity
The Seahawks could have let Fuller go this spring. Instead, they brought him back for 2021 as an exclusive-rights free agent at a bargain $920,000.
Ethan Pocic was the first-time starter at center in 2020.
You know, the season that ended with Wilson loudly and uncharacteristically complaining about getting hit too much.
The Seahawks heard Wilson. They then traded with the Raiders to get Gabe Jackson, one of the league’s better pass-blocking guards the last half-dozen seasons.
Seattle loves Damien Lewis, their rookie starter at guard last year. Left tackle Duane Brown remains the team’s best offensive lineman, by far, on the eve of his 36th birthday next month. Brown wants to keep playing beyond his contract ending this year. Right tackle Brandon Shell had one of the better seasons on the Seahawks’ offense in his Seattle debut last year.
Pocic re-signed for one year and $3 million this spring. That short term suggests Seattle doesn’t see him as its long-term answer at center. He may have more value as a swing backup at guard and tackle, where he played his first three seasons for the Seahawks.
Pocic and Fuller, who made one start last season, split time as the first-team center during offseason workouts and the mandatory minicamp last month.
Fuller’s bid to make Pocic a backup begins in earnest Wednesday.
This story was originally published July 27, 2021 at 1:50 PM.
