Category Archives: X’s & O’s

Forget Wilson; priority is fixing the defense

October 8, 2021 cc 3 Comments

For some fans, the sky is always falling. So, you can imagine the reaction after the Seahawks lost to the Rams yet again – and Russell Wilson got hurt along the way.

The Hawks are now 2-3, and some people are writing their 2021 obit. But the season is far from over.

The Hawks were not expected to beat the Rams – not this time, not with an inconsistent offense and discombobulated defense. The only surprise in the 26-17 loss was the finger injury to Wilson, which actually improved the offense as Geno Smith led the Hawks to more points in one quarter (10) than Wilson had in three (7).

Smith’s steady performance – minus the unfortunate interception at the end – assuaged any concerns that the Hawks cannot win without Wilson. In some ways, Smith was better (e.g., he worked the middle of the field and threw a successful screen pass).

The big problem Seattle must fix over the next 10 days – before a Sunday night game in Pittsburgh – is a defense that once again is off to a historically bad start. Pete Carroll and Ken Norton Jr. have got to seal up the cracks – again.

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Week 3: At Minnesota, X's & O's

What are the problems & how do they fix them?

September 28, 2021 cc 5 Comments

After a great start to the season in Indianapolis, the Seahawks have been a mess the past two games. And, if they don’t fix it ASAP, they will quickly find themselves in a hole too deep to climb out of.

A week after the offense played deep ball too much and kept the defense on the field all game in an overtime loss to Tennessee, the defense returned the favor by not stopping Kirk Cousins and the Vikings in a demoralizing 30-17 defeat.

It has been a full team failure the past two weeks, and Seattle has to figure out how to fix the NFL’s worst defense while also getting the offense to do something in the second half. There is no break in the schedule, so Pete Carroll and his staff have to figure it out on the fly as they head to San Francisco this week, then host the Rams next Thursday and travel to Pittsburgh in Week 6.

So, what are the problems?

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Week 3: At Minnesota, X's & O's

After Week 2 failure, Waldron faces big test

September 24, 2021 cc 1 Comment

In the wake of a horrific upset loss to Tennessee and with a tough four-game stretch looming, Shane Waldron’s first test has arrived quite quickly.

If the Seahawks are going to stay in the race for home field, Waldron is going to have to rebound from a poor second game by scheming more like he did in the opener, and he is going to need to get Russell Wilson to follow his lead.

It all starts in Minnesota on Sunday.

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OTAs, State of the team, X's & O's

Wilson ‘here to win it all’; can Waldron help make it happen?

June 11, 2021 cc Leave a comment

“You know what heals all things? Winning.” – Russell Wilson

That’s all we need to know about the state of things between the Seahawks and their longtime Pro Bowl quarterback.

Even though he claims things are peachy now between him, Pete Carroll and the club, Wilson confirmed it was indeed a tumultuous offseason – and Wilson’s future in Seattle still seems to depend almost entirely on whether the Seahawks make it back to the Super Bowl. In every response Thursday about his drama-filled offseason, Wilson circled invariably back to the theme of winning.

“Coach Carroll and I spent a lot of time together one on one, and we’re on the same page,” Wilson said. “We’re here to do what we’re meant to do, and that’s to win it all. I’m excited. I’m excited about who we have, the guys we have. I’m excited where we are. Coach Carroll and my relationship couldn’t be any stronger. My focus is to win. Winning is everything to me.”

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X's & O's

Lockett: Hawks must learn and adapt

April 14, 2021 cc 4 Comments

All of the key figures on the Seattle offense have now weighed in, and Tyler Lockett hit the most important factor in the Seahawks rebounding from their dud finish in 2020: “You have to learn how to evolve; you have to learn how to adapt.”

Like Pete Carroll and Russell Wilson and DK Metcalf before him, Lockett admitted the Seahawks did not adjust well to defenses that took away their deep throws in the second half of last season. The question is whether they will all be on the same page under new OC Shane Waldron as they look to avoid a similar fate and advance deep into the postseason in 2021.

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The roster, X's & O's

A third of Wilson’s sacks were on him — most in his career

February 12, 2021 cc Leave a comment

Russell Wilson picked a strange year to call out the Seahawks for not protecting him, considering the 2020 line was one of the best he has had and he was responsible for a career-high 14 sacks – nearly a third of the 47 times he was dropped.

Counting playoffs, he was to blame for 16 of 51 sacks (31%), per Pro Football Focus, and we tallied the same via a cut-up video posted by Parker Lewis on Twitter.

So it’s fairly disingenuous of him to put the blame on the line and John Schneider — this year anyway — when he bears a third of the responsibility. Yeah, he mentioned he needs to get better, too, but you know he is not going to change certain aspects of his game at this stage of his career. He is always going to be a double-edged sword, and 2020 was the ultimate example of that.

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Coaches, On the air, X's & O's

Wilson ‘very adamant’ about fixing ‘passive’ offense

February 5, 2021 cc Leave a comment

In his first comments since the Seahawks hired Shane Waldron to run the offense, Russell Wilson said he was “adamant” about finding an OC who would maintain a dynamic offense and he said he already has talked to Waldron several times about how they are going to do that.

In his radio spot, he also said the Seahawks became “passive” in the second half of last season – due in part to offensive line injuries and his own uneven play.

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Coaches, X's & O's

Waldron: We’ll have an ‘attacking mindset’

February 2, 2021 cc Leave a comment

The best thing Shane Waldron said Tuesday in his first public words as Seattle’s new offensive coordinator is that he wants to have an “attacking mindset” and to “be the one that puts the foot on the gas pedal.”

That’s music to the ears of Seahawks fans and Russell Wilson, who enjoyed the offense’s fast start in 2020 and want to continue to score early and often all the way to the Super Bowl.

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Coaches, X's & O's

Waldron’s task: Help Wilson sustain great play into postseason

January 27, 2021 cc Leave a comment

If you can’t beat ’em, have ’em join you.

That’s apparently what the Seahawks were thinking when they reportedly decided to hire Shane Waldron to fix an offense that diminished by 11 points per game in the second half of the 2020 season (from 34 to 23) and flamed out against Waldron’s Rams in the playoffs.

Waldron’s task will be simple (OK, simply defined anyway): Get Russell Wilson to sustain his excellent play into December and January, get the offense to play well against good defenses in the postseason and get back over the hump and into the Super Bowl.

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Coaches, On the air, X's & O's

Holmgren explains how to fix the offense

January 26, 2021 cc 3 Comments

As Pete Carroll looks for Russell Wilson’s third offensive coordinator in 10 years, DK Metcalf has given his two cents about what happened to Seattle’s offense and Mike Holmgren has told us what the new coordinator needs to do to help Wilson.

Metcalf confirmed what we all saw: “Teams just started to figure us out. We’ve been running deep pass ever since Pete got there. Play-action. Run the ball, run the ball, run the ball, go deep. Teams just said, ‘We’re just not gonna let you all go deep.’”

Of course, a good OC would have worked around the Cover 2 schemes that oddly stymied Wilson and Brian Schottenheimer for the final two months of 2020. Holmgren, a first-generation West Coast offense disciple, said it is on the OC to adjust.

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