Coby Bryant. Julian Love. Devon Witherspoon. Multiplicity abounds in Seahawks’ secondary
Devon Witherspoon was the first cornerback taken in this year’s draft. The Seahawks have moved him inside to nickel defensive back.
Nickel is what Coby Bryant was for Seattle last season as a rookie. This month, Pete Carroll moved Bryant to safety.
Safety is where Julian Love is playing now. The former New York Giants captain has also played cornerback. He’s played nickel back. He’s played every back in the secondary in his NFL career.
Jonathan Sutherland was a safety last season, his final one for Penn State. Now, with Witherspoon out because of a hamstring injury, Sutherland is getting looks at nickel with the starting defense. Sunday, in Seattle’s most recent practice before a players’ day off Monday, Carroll spent time after many plays tutoring Sutherland with coaching points.
Carroll featuring not just versatility but also multiplicity with his Seahawks defense serves two purposes:
1. It puts the best players on Seattle’s defense, those in the secondary, on the field more, and they are playing in varied roles difficult for an offensive coordinator and quarterback to discern before the snap.
2. It follows a trend across the NFL, defenses’ answer to offenses using three- and increasingly four- and five-wide receiver formations.
Even with $70 million safety Jamal Adams missing all but the first half of the first game with a major knee injury, Seattle had five defensive backs on the field for 56% of its defensive snaps last season. In the seasons before that, it’s been above 60%.
Statistically speaking, nickel has become the Seahawks’ base defense.
“Ten years ago, nickel (became) paramount in the league, and so you have to have DBs on the field,” Love said. “Now some teams are trying to scheme it up by having big bodies. It might be 12-personnel (one running back, two tight ends) in that 11-personnel set.
“Three safeties are now becoming common. You just have to keep switching it up.”
Love would know.
Julian Love can play anywhere
The Seahawks gave Love a two-year contract worth up to $12 million this offseason because of his proven ability with the Giants to play four positions: deep post safety, strong safety closer to the middle of the defense, cornerback and inside slot nickel.
Love and Pro Bowl veteran Quandre Diggs have been the starting safeties while Adams remains on the physically-unable-to-perform list.
“He’s been fantastic,” Carroll said of Love, 25. “He’s a young kid still, a young man still. But he’s like he’s been around forever. He’s got great sense, great awareness, presence. He totally gets football. It makes sense to him.
“He’s an excellent communicator, really a gifted smooth athlete with real quickness ... and that comes from really great instincts. He looked great. I know that it’s been obvious to Quandre that he’s got a guy that really can command what’s going on. And so they’re sharing the duties and working together and growing. And so he’s another guy who made a great first impression on us.”
It’s no sure thing Adams begins the season playing. He is still recovering from a torn quadriceps tendon from 11 months ago. Carroll keeps saying Adams is doing well in his rehabilitation with the Seahawks’ athletic trainers. But the team doesn’t know when Adams will begin practicing.
When Adams does return, Carroll and defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt have plans to use him close to the line of scrimmage as a blitzer and almost another linebacker. That would give Seattle a three-safety look on defense, with Love or even Diggs able to interchange with Adams in that close-to-the-line role on given downs.
The idea is to pressure offenses with more unpredictability about where Seattle’s defenders are coming from and what coverage and gap responsibilities they have.
That could be an issue for Diggs, the traffic cop of the secondary. From his free safety spot he has to get every defensive back into the right spots and confirm coverage responsibilities based on the offense’s formation right before each snap.
Three weeks into training camp, less than three weeks before the season begins, Love is making the 30-year-old Diggs’ life so much easier than it could be.
“When you’ve got smart football players, it’s easy to get along with them, and we see the game the same way,” Diggs said.
“It’s easy to talk through it with him because Julian understands those things. And it’s not hard to communicate with him, at all.”
Love is making life easier for Bryant, too.
Carroll moved Bryant, the 2021 Jim Thorpe Award winner as college football’s top defensive back at Cincinnati, from nickel to safety early this month. That was while Witherspoon was getting Bryant’s reps at nickel with the starting defense, because of Witherspoon’s tackling skills on top of coverage ability.
At the beginning of this month it was shaping up to be Witherspoon versus Bryant for the nickel job. Now Witherspoon has missed the last week with a hamstring injury. He’s due to get re-evaluated Tuesday.
Sutherland has stepped in to share nickel snaps with Bryant.
And Bryant has stepped up his time at safety. He started there with Sutherland in Seattle’s first preseason game against Minnesota last week.
Diggs and Love watched with 13 other resting regular starters.
What this means for Woolen, Jackson, Brown
Karl Scott, the Seahawks’ senior defensive assistant and defensive passing game coordinator, sees safety as a place Bryant can use his physicality and his coverage skills, much like Seattle sees with Witherspoon’s skills fitting nickel about 5 yards in front of safety.
“Coby is a physical guy. Has ball skills, for sure,” Scott said. “He is instinctive as far as playing in space.
“At this day and age, with what the league is going to with matchups (DBs on receivers and vice versa), the day and age of a ‘box safety’ is long gone. And few and far between are guys who can cover at the safety position, in the slot, and not just the tight end. His nickel skills and his corner skills will help him out, along with his smarts, too.
“He could be an asset at the safety position.”
All of this — Bryant at safety, Witherspoon (when he gets back) and Sutherland at nickel — signals Carroll and the Seahawks are sold on 2022 rookie Pro Bowl cornerback Riq Woolen on the right with whoever wins the Michael Jackson-versus-Tre Brown competition on the left as the starting cornerbacks to begin this season.
They are trying everyone else in multiple, versatile roles inside those cornerbacks.
“Teams that are multiple are successful on defense,” Love said. “You’ve got to have guys to do multiple roles, playing multiple things.
“And that’s what we’re, hopefully, trying to accomplish.”
This story was originally published August 15, 2023 at 6:55 AM.
