kearly
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Like Brock Huard says, it's never as bad as you think on gameday and never as good as you think. I came away with a pretty different impression in some aspects after watching a second time, and overall I feel a lot more optimistic about the state of the franchise than I did yesterday.
Scheme
During the preseason, the Seahawks starting offense ran mostly 2 WR sets. Either with 2 TEs and a RB or sometimes with 1 TE and a FB/HB. I got so lost in the action during Sunday's game that I assumed Seattle was still running out of this "2012 style" offense as their staple. I was wrong. Against the Dolphins Seattle ran most of their plays out of the spread with 3+ WRs. At times, Seattle had as many as 5 wide with an empty backfield. I didn't chart the play designs, but I would guess that Seattle had at least 3 WRs on the field at least 75% of the snaps if not more.
Seattle did get a little cute with some under center stuff in the first half with bad results, but it didn't last long. For most of the game, Seattle was running the second half of 2015 style of offense.
And while the offense really struggled to move the chains and score points, I consider this to be a huge sigh of relief. Rather than thinking Seattle wasn't playing their personnel to their strengths, they actually were, but just had an off game. Either that, or the Miami defense is a hell of a lot better than anyone expects. While the latter strikes me as unlikely, it's a new coaching staff and they did make several notable defensive acquisitions this offseason, so we shouldn't rule out that possibility completely. And for what it's worth, Miami's defense did pass they eyeball test pretty well.
Pass rush
I could be wrong but as far as I can tell Miami didn't successfully pick up a blitz until mid-way through the 4th quarter. Seattle was KILLING the Dolphins with the blitz. Seattle was equally deadly with the 4 man rush when utilizing stunts, including two stunts for sacks to end the game.
The vanilla pass rush continues to have issues, but thankfully vanilla calls were rare in this game. Of Miami's 34 passing plays, Seattle rushed four without stunts only 10 times. Nearly all of those plays resulted in Tannehill having at least 4 seconds to throw, though the coverage forced Tannehill into multiple throwaways and one coverage induced Seneca-sack by KJ Wright, who was not one of the original four rushers. Michael Bennett's sack came from a vanilla pass rush, but Tannehill had about 4 seconds before being sacked and got caught flat footed on the play. There was also a play where Frank Clark did an impromptu delayed stunt that helped generate a clean QB hit just after the pass.
Seattle also went with a 3 man rush twice, and they were two of the more disastrous plays of the game. The first was the should have been 71 yard TD pass to Kenny Stills that afforded Tannehill plenty of time to look deep, and the second was the catch and run to Jarvis Landry for roughly 30 yards that sparked the Dolphins TD drive. On the second play, Tannehill waited roughly 6 seconds before finding Landry and never really had to move off his spot.
Overall, this game seemed like a step in the right direction for Kris Richard. He knows he needs to get creative to get to the QB, and in this game, he took advantage of a Dolphins OL with struggles in protection by dialing up 22 aggressive pass rush calls out of 34 total opportunities. And those aggressive calls almost always had success, it wasn't until Miami's TD drive that they even started to have an answer for the blitz.
Part of it is the QB as well. Tannehill really struggled to beat the blitz, other than a 50 yard dump off pass to Arian Foster, and even that play appeared to be a designed call and not an impromptu move by the QB.
Overall, the pass rush looked insanely good when there were moving parts. Frank Clark in particular seems to live and die by the inside stunt for the time being. Not to sound like a backhanded compliment though, because Clark's athleticism is starting to match a DE type profile and he's starting to get a better feel for the position. He looks like he's developing ahead of schedule.
Wilson
Who knows how the ankle will be in a week, but by the final drive, Wilson looked close to 100%. On his fumbled pitch, which occurred not too long after his 3rd quarter ankle injury, he actually got struck pretty good on his ankles by Mark Glowinsky, and yet Wilson showed no signs of pain whatsoever.
His overall performance in the game had symptoms of rust. The interception he threw is one of the worst interceptions you'll ever see him throw, and his fumbled pitch was simply a case of him trying too hard to make a play. We'll see how Wilson's ankle holds up, but when he gets healthy again, I think he'll be fine.
O-line
Gilliam got away with some holds at times, Sowell had some holding calls (though one of them was a phantom hold), and JaMarcus Webb got dominated a few times by Suh. That said, Webb did just barely a good enough job, in that he and the other interior lineman successfully kept Suh from taking over the game. Last year's OL would have been utterly destroyed by Suh. Overall, Seattle's OL did a better job than expected at protecting Wilson, and gave him a reasonable amount of time to throw on most plays.
Where the line struggled a bit more was run blocking, particularly Mark Glowinsky who got blown up on a couple of flow runs, including the Wilson fumble play. It wasn't all bad though, by the second half the running game was starting to heat up, especially when Christine Michael was getting the ball.
My game ball on the OL goes to Garry Gilliam. He got away with some ridiculously flagrant holds at times, but considering his matchup (Cameron Wake) I thought he had an outstanding game. He is slowly but surely turning into a real NFL player.
Overall thoughts
It's hard to say how much of the defensive performance was on Tannehill's limitations or on Seattle's dominance, but other than a handful of lapses, this game had a legit 2013 feel defensively. The secondary was smothering receivers, and the pass rush was mostly getting home. The run defense isn't quite as stout at the point of attack as last year, but it is still very good at making tackles for loss or keeping rushes to 3 yards or less.
It's also worth noting that Miami gained half their yards on just 3 plays. So yes, there are things to patch up, leaks to plug, and so on. But this defense already looks nastier than it did an any game last season. Just imagine how good the defense would have looked if Earl Thomas had played like Earl Thomas, instead of having a fluky day to forget.
The offense has work to do, but it might not have to be great this year.
Scheme
During the preseason, the Seahawks starting offense ran mostly 2 WR sets. Either with 2 TEs and a RB or sometimes with 1 TE and a FB/HB. I got so lost in the action during Sunday's game that I assumed Seattle was still running out of this "2012 style" offense as their staple. I was wrong. Against the Dolphins Seattle ran most of their plays out of the spread with 3+ WRs. At times, Seattle had as many as 5 wide with an empty backfield. I didn't chart the play designs, but I would guess that Seattle had at least 3 WRs on the field at least 75% of the snaps if not more.
Seattle did get a little cute with some under center stuff in the first half with bad results, but it didn't last long. For most of the game, Seattle was running the second half of 2015 style of offense.
And while the offense really struggled to move the chains and score points, I consider this to be a huge sigh of relief. Rather than thinking Seattle wasn't playing their personnel to their strengths, they actually were, but just had an off game. Either that, or the Miami defense is a hell of a lot better than anyone expects. While the latter strikes me as unlikely, it's a new coaching staff and they did make several notable defensive acquisitions this offseason, so we shouldn't rule out that possibility completely. And for what it's worth, Miami's defense did pass they eyeball test pretty well.
Pass rush
I could be wrong but as far as I can tell Miami didn't successfully pick up a blitz until mid-way through the 4th quarter. Seattle was KILLING the Dolphins with the blitz. Seattle was equally deadly with the 4 man rush when utilizing stunts, including two stunts for sacks to end the game.
The vanilla pass rush continues to have issues, but thankfully vanilla calls were rare in this game. Of Miami's 34 passing plays, Seattle rushed four without stunts only 10 times. Nearly all of those plays resulted in Tannehill having at least 4 seconds to throw, though the coverage forced Tannehill into multiple throwaways and one coverage induced Seneca-sack by KJ Wright, who was not one of the original four rushers. Michael Bennett's sack came from a vanilla pass rush, but Tannehill had about 4 seconds before being sacked and got caught flat footed on the play. There was also a play where Frank Clark did an impromptu delayed stunt that helped generate a clean QB hit just after the pass.
Seattle also went with a 3 man rush twice, and they were two of the more disastrous plays of the game. The first was the should have been 71 yard TD pass to Kenny Stills that afforded Tannehill plenty of time to look deep, and the second was the catch and run to Jarvis Landry for roughly 30 yards that sparked the Dolphins TD drive. On the second play, Tannehill waited roughly 6 seconds before finding Landry and never really had to move off his spot.
Overall, this game seemed like a step in the right direction for Kris Richard. He knows he needs to get creative to get to the QB, and in this game, he took advantage of a Dolphins OL with struggles in protection by dialing up 22 aggressive pass rush calls out of 34 total opportunities. And those aggressive calls almost always had success, it wasn't until Miami's TD drive that they even started to have an answer for the blitz.
Part of it is the QB as well. Tannehill really struggled to beat the blitz, other than a 50 yard dump off pass to Arian Foster, and even that play appeared to be a designed call and not an impromptu move by the QB.
Overall, the pass rush looked insanely good when there were moving parts. Frank Clark in particular seems to live and die by the inside stunt for the time being. Not to sound like a backhanded compliment though, because Clark's athleticism is starting to match a DE type profile and he's starting to get a better feel for the position. He looks like he's developing ahead of schedule.
Wilson
Who knows how the ankle will be in a week, but by the final drive, Wilson looked close to 100%. On his fumbled pitch, which occurred not too long after his 3rd quarter ankle injury, he actually got struck pretty good on his ankles by Mark Glowinsky, and yet Wilson showed no signs of pain whatsoever.
His overall performance in the game had symptoms of rust. The interception he threw is one of the worst interceptions you'll ever see him throw, and his fumbled pitch was simply a case of him trying too hard to make a play. We'll see how Wilson's ankle holds up, but when he gets healthy again, I think he'll be fine.
O-line
Gilliam got away with some holds at times, Sowell had some holding calls (though one of them was a phantom hold), and JaMarcus Webb got dominated a few times by Suh. That said, Webb did just barely a good enough job, in that he and the other interior lineman successfully kept Suh from taking over the game. Last year's OL would have been utterly destroyed by Suh. Overall, Seattle's OL did a better job than expected at protecting Wilson, and gave him a reasonable amount of time to throw on most plays.
Where the line struggled a bit more was run blocking, particularly Mark Glowinsky who got blown up on a couple of flow runs, including the Wilson fumble play. It wasn't all bad though, by the second half the running game was starting to heat up, especially when Christine Michael was getting the ball.
My game ball on the OL goes to Garry Gilliam. He got away with some ridiculously flagrant holds at times, but considering his matchup (Cameron Wake) I thought he had an outstanding game. He is slowly but surely turning into a real NFL player.
Overall thoughts
It's hard to say how much of the defensive performance was on Tannehill's limitations or on Seattle's dominance, but other than a handful of lapses, this game had a legit 2013 feel defensively. The secondary was smothering receivers, and the pass rush was mostly getting home. The run defense isn't quite as stout at the point of attack as last year, but it is still very good at making tackles for loss or keeping rushes to 3 yards or less.
It's also worth noting that Miami gained half their yards on just 3 plays. So yes, there are things to patch up, leaks to plug, and so on. But this defense already looks nastier than it did an any game last season. Just imagine how good the defense would have looked if Earl Thomas had played like Earl Thomas, instead of having a fluky day to forget.
The offense has work to do, but it might not have to be great this year.
