Where are we on Kris Richard?

I’m curious to get everyone’s thoughts on Kris Richard. Is everyone happy with him? Do they like him better or worse than Bradley or Quinn?

Personally, if I had to grade him, I’d give him an incomplete.

At times last year, especially against krusty veteran play-callers, he had his lunch money taken. Simple as that. He’d also get cute occasionally. One example is only rushing 3 and dropping MB into coverage. And while the DL depth was lacking last year I still found his rotation a bit off, situationally.

All that said, he was a rookie DC missing his all-pro SS for a time, paired with an offense struggling for at least half of the season. I have some concerns but think its unfair to judge him off last year alone.

Quinn inherited the championship defense. Richard didn't, but I'm curious to see what happens this year. I'm thinking he steps up a few notches.

Not sure whether to blame him or our ineffective offense, but those late game collapses reminded me of Gus Bradley's last season here. I think Richard's expertise as a secondary coach had me expecting a consistency in the backend that was unreasonable due to the injuries, holdouts and bad fits.

I think he is having growing pains but he has been under Pete's defensive style for awhile, so I am sure he knows what Pete expects and if he doesn't produce will be demoted or let go in time. Always wondered why Pete picked him over Norton or whether that was actually the case. Maybe Norton just wanted back in the California market?

Anyway, I would give Richard a C+, he faced the heat and didn't seem to wilt under the glow. Will be interesting if defensively this year some of the failures of last year continues. The audience will start to get restless I am sure.

He didn't have the pass rush that Quinn had during our superb owl championship.

Until we get more pressure on the qb our defense is going to fall apart against good qbs.

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Tech Worlds":14m1t7o4 said:

He didn't have the pass rush that Quinn had during our superb owl championship.

Until we get more pressure on the qb our defense is going to fall apart against good qbs.

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I'm in agreement.

Aside from the two or three coverage breakdowns (see CIN and CAR), felt more like an issue with pass rush to me. We had to blitz quite a bit to get to the QB last year.

I like Richard's blitzing tendencies. Bold and well-timed.

As far as everything else, well, we had injuries and Cary Williams to deal with.

I'll go with 'incomplete.' Had some breakdowns, but many of those might have been the players, including those missing on holdouts and injury. I still put a lot of blame on the O for the late game losses. One more 1st down each by them might have won us 2-3 more games. But I digress.

I'd say he didn't look that bad for a rookie coordinator. He certainly didn't do "fire him" bad last year. He earned another shot this year, IMHO. I think we need to keep a DC around for more than 1-2 years for a change.

He is young and inexperienced, but being tutored by a great defensive mind.

He will get better over time and move on to further the Pete Carroll coaching tree. Then another young man will step in to fill the void. These iterations will continue as long as PC is the head coach.

He's really good at dialing up a blitz in the right way at the right time. Only rarely do one of his blitzes backfire, and they tend to be pretty effective at getting to the QB.

Unfortunately, his soft zones in coverage more than undo the good he's done as a defensive playcaller. I'm hoping that these soft zones were a reaction to the personnel issues and won't become a long term handicap.

I badly miss Dan Quinn and would take him back as DC in an instant, but the jury is still out on Richard for me.

We ran a lot more cover 1 in the earlier part of the season than we ever did before. I don't believe that has anything to do with Richard, however. The absence of Kam played a huge part in that his adjustments to a cover 3 or even cover 2 weren't there to shift what needed to be shifted from a coverage standpoint. Your standard zone coverages are actually quite easy to put holes in (because there are inherent holes in each one) without the people to shade it, cheat it, or disguise it. That was lacking and so we went to a cover 1 and it showed. Even in the early parts of where he came back there were some fatal errors in communication (between ET and Sherm in the CAR case).

As the season went on I did see more of what we're used to though. More cover 3 with deep emphasis trying to force teams to chew up small chunks of the field without error and more plays per drive in order to get where they want to get. At one point I think we blitzed as much as last year, but it went away towards the end of the year and ironically that happened to coincide with when we weren't getting much of a pass rush.

As of right now I don't think Richardson is a problem per se, but I don't fully know that he's the answer either.

I like him a lot better than Brady Quinn, wait, that's who you said, right?

For me as well I think it's far too soon to assess totally what we have with Richard, his grade is still an incomplete. We all do need to remember he was a rookie DC last season and clearly that showed at times when it wasn't the case with Quinn, or as much with his predecessor.

It's apparent from some of the personnel additions this offseason that the team is going to work hard at finding some answers to their repeating inability to cover the TE seam routes. I agree as well though he is creative at blitzing which is an improvement but for a former DB he needs to be sharper at his zone coverage plans. Generally I'm feeling positive about him.

Some improvement to the pass rush would definitely improve the overall defensive performance but we need to remember the hawks were the #1 scoring D again last season.

Mick063":t2mjp7hd said:

He is young and inexperienced, but being tutored by a great defensive mind.

He will get better over time and move on to further the Pete Carroll coaching tree. Then another young man will step in to fill the void. These iterations will continue as long as PC is the head coach.

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If that happened, I wonder if the Hawks would be able to lure Norton back to be the DC. Will probably take a few years though before Richard moves up to an HC spot.

HawkGA":3nzj13d1 said:

I like him a lot better than Brady Quinn, wait, that's who you said, right?

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I never say Brady Quinn...but I always think Brady Quinn

Dan Quinn remains my favorite.

I feel more comfortable pairing up a head coach from a defensive back history with a defensive coordinator from a front seven background. My assumption is that a DB and front 7 combo invites better balance. Where as an understudy from a more similar orientation carries some risk to maintenance of a balanced perspective and priority.

I'm looking forward to gathering a more solid impression as the defense and its tendencies evolve.

I'd say incomplete is pretty accurate.

Richard had to deal with stuff that Quinn and Bradley never did, namely a crushing defeat in the last seconds of a Superbowl, combined with a star player holding out. There was more adversity and drama than I remember in either of the previous DC's regimes.

One thing I'll say is that Richard has an instinctive feel for the blitz. He may not blitz as much as Quinn did, but he seems to be very effective when he calls one.

I think he'll be fine next year.

Richard has a much different job than his predecessors. Our cover-3 isn't going to sneak up on anyone anymore. Quinn and Bradley could lean on it, and the good QB's still hadn't come up with a real gameplan for how to beat us. Last year, you saw good teams just waiting for us to get into it. There were games where we had to call predominately cover-2 in the second half, and since we don't practice it a ton, and it puts a bunch more pressure on Chancellor, we didn't execute it all that well. If I had to guess, I think we'll see more man this year, especially if Browner is going to play some LB. We'll still see a lot of base cover-3 against the subpar QB's, but we're going to have to mix it up a lot more against the good ones.

I think he steps it up this year.

Dan Quinn had our best players and depth and most were all healthy until the end of the season.

Kris Richard had our best players recovering from injuries, Kam's holdout, and Carry Williams.

This year our starters are mostly healthy, and we got some new bloods coming in and no Cary Williams. I think we will start seeing a suffocating defense again.

Tical21":dkbv0q46 said:

Richard has a much different job than his predecessors. Our cover-3 isn't going to sneak up on anyone anymore. Quinn and Bradley could lean on it, and the good QB's still hadn't come up with a real gameplan for how to beat us. Last year, you saw good teams just waiting for us to get into it. There were games where we had to call predominately cover-2 in the second half, and since we don't practice it a ton, and it puts a bunch more pressure on Chancellor, we didn't execute it all that well. If I had to guess, I think we'll see more man this year, especially if Browner is going to play some LB. We'll still see a lot of base cover-3 against the subpar QB's, but we're going to have to mix it up a lot more against the good ones.

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Cover 3 is still impenetrable with a pass rush. At least for Seattle and IMO.

Tical nailed this.

That and what I said, Quinn inherited the defense that won the SB. Right place, right time.

This time Richard will have all the starters in camp and the offense may just have a line to help out the D.