Devon Witherspoon, Seahawks know they must get better at football’s most important number
As is his aggressive, flashy nature, Devon Witherspoon did not hesitate.
The Pro Bowl cornerback had an instant answer to how his Seahawks defense and entire team can improve in 2025.
“We’ve got to create more turnovers for ourselves,” Witherspoon said, looking up from his seat at his locker on the team’s clean-out day Jan. 6.
It was the day after Seattle’s season ended with a win at the NFC West-champion Los Angeles Rams reserves — but no playoff berth for the second consecutive year.
“That’s mostly on us, as players,” Witherspoon said, “to get more turnovers.”
There are so many numbers and statistics by which to analyze football. Yards. Points. Third-down conversion rate. Red-zone scoring. Passer rating. There’s often-cited analytics metrics: DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average); EPA (Expected Points Added).
Yet the number most important to determining who makes the playoffs and who watches them from home — like the Seahawks have been doing all month — is turnover margin.
“That stat exists for a reason, on positive turnover margin,” Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said. “And the best teams have a high turnover margin.
“So that’s something we’re going to be chasing.”
To Witherspoon’s point, the Seahawks defense produced just 18 takeaways in 17 games.
On offense, quarterback Geno Smith’s 15 interceptions were second-most in the NFL. His five interceptions in the red zone were the league’s most. Those were particularly game-turning. They cost Seattle almost-sure points while often turning into scores for the opposing team.
That added up to Seattle being minus-6 in turnover margin this past season, 25th in the 32-team league.
The top teams in the NFL in taking the ball away, Minnesota and Pittsburgh, each had nearly twice as many takeaways as the Seahawks, 33.
How important is turnover margin — limiting turnovers on offense and taking the ball away on defense — to winning?
The top eight teams in turnover margin all made the playoffs: the Bills, Steelers, Packers, Chargers, Vikings, Eagles, Texans and Lions.
The bottom 10 teams in turnover margin all missed the playoffs: the Browns, Titans, Raiders, Jaguars, Patriots, 49ers, Giants, Seahawks, Cowboys and Falcons.
All four teams playing in the conference championship games Sunday — the Eagles and Commanders in the NFC, the Chiefs and Bills in the AFC — have not turned the ball over a single time in these playoffs.
It’s why Kansas City is 15-2 and favored to go back to a third consecutive Super Bowl, despite the two-time defending NFL champion not playing at its best most of this season. The Chiefs haven’t turned the ball over in eight games, not since Week 11 at Buffalo (of course they lost that game).
That was before Thanksgiving.
The 37-year-old Macdonald is the NFL’s youngest head man. Yet the defensive whiz has been in the league 11 years, 10 as an assistant for John Harbaugh’s Baltimore Ravens. He also spent a year (2021) as the defensive coordinator for Jim Harbaugh’s University of Michigan Wolverines.
He’s been around long enough to know how important the turnover number is to winning.
“The turnover margin is not where it needs to be moving forward,” Macdonald said of his Seahawks in the 2024 season in which they went 10-7, yet nowhere near where they wanted to go.
“So again, that’s something we’ll look at in the offseason and go attack the heck out of it.”
Correlation to turnovers, winning
Seattle had just five takeaways on fumble recoveries in 2024. That tied for the second-fewest in the league.
“We’ve got to take more shots at the ball, as the ball carrier is going down, “ Witherspoon said.
And to the second-year cornerback’s point about it being on the players: He’s right. It’s not as if Macdonald wasn’t coaching it or emphasizing it.
Macdonald’s Ravens led the NFL in takeaways and turnover margin in 2023, when he was coordinator of the league’s number-one defense in Baltimore.
Former NFL and University of Washington quarterback Hugh Millen contributes to The 33rd Team, a panel of former NFL executives, coaches and players who provide in-depth analysis and statistics on the league. Millen told The News Tribune on KJR-FM radio this week of the correlation measure The 33rd Team uses on certain metrics and winning games. It’s on a scale of zero to 1,000; the higher the number the higher its correlation is proven to winning.
For the 2024 NFL season, turnover margin had a correlation to winning of 775.
“That is a really big number,” Millen said.
Over the last six seasons, it’s 724.
“To put that into context, sacks, for example: Sacks have a 348 correlation,” Millen said. “Yards per game, 401. Interceptions, 624.”
Completion percentage, a stat where Smith set a Seahawks record of 70.4% this past season and earned a $2 million contract bonus for doing so, has a correlation number of only 211.
“Yes,” Millen said, “turnovers have a big correlation.”
Seahawks’ ways to improve turnovers
So how do Macdonald and the Seahawks intend to attack this biggest issue on a defense the coach, Witherspoon, standout defensive lineman Leonard Williams and the midseason acquisition of Ernest Jones at middle linebacker turned around during the 2024 season?
The most obvious way is to force quarterbacks into mistakes with more pressure. Yet the Seahawks were eighth in the NFL in pressure rate this past season, at 24.8%. They were eighth in sacks despite being just 18th in blitz rate (23.6%). So Williams and the defensive front got to the quarterback. Seattle’s 13 interceptions on defense were 12th in the league.
Another way: “The quarterback getting fooled,” Millen said.
Macdonald did that with increasingly tricky defensive schems as the Seahawks’ 2024 season went on.
In early December, Macdonald had Williams lined up as a nose tackle with Seattle showing blitz on a third down against the Jets and Aaron Rodgers. Rodgers believed Williams was rushing, as nose tackles usually do. But Williams dropped into zone coverage. The big lineman was directly in front of the in-breaking hot route Rodgers was throwing to for a would-be first down in the red zone.
Macdonald’s scheme and Williams’ drop into coverage fooled the four-time NFL MVP quarterback into an interception. Williams returned it 92 yards for the key touchdown in Seattle’s 26-21 win at New York.
Another way to increase the turnovers in pass defense would be for Macdonald to have Witherspoon and Seattle’s defensive backs be more aggressive in coverage. But that comes at the risk of giving up big plays behind them.
The Seahawks had multiple injuries in their secondary throughout the season — to opposite starting cornerback Riq Woolen, to cornerback Tre Brown, to safety Rayshawn Jenkins. They had Josh Jobe, a waiver pickup from Philadelphia last summer, starting at times.
Amid all the mixing, matching and fill-ins, Macdonald often had his Seahawks defensive backs play deep, to avoid giving up big pass plays. The trade off is not being tighter to receivers, not in a better position to intercept the arriving pass.
Are you being more conservative, with the tackle?” Millen said. “Or are you saying ‘jump the route?’”
Then there’s the tackling Witherspoon cited. He says when the Seahawks do that next season, they need to punch the ball out. That will be more than they did this past year, in the daily-bear-hug-and-punch drills Macdonald had every Seahawks defender from lineman to safety do from training camp in July through season’s end this month.
“You can emphasize it, talk about it. In practice, ‘rip the ball out, rip the ball out,’” Millen said.
But it’s the actual application of it in games Seattle lacked in 2024.
This story was originally published January 24, 2025 at 7:00 AM.
