Seahawks front office offseason bet backfires for second year in a row

As tempting as it may be to spend the whole week lambasting Ken Norton Jr’s lackluster performance as the Seattle Seahawks’ defensive coordinator, it’s still ultimately unfair to throw all the blame on him.

It’s time the front office, including Pete Carroll, given he has the dual role, once again received its criticism for mismanaging the obvious weakness of this offseason.

With Shaquill Griffin leaving the Seahawks for the Jacksonville Jaguars in free agency, it left Seattle without an obvious cornerback. Tre Flowers couldn’t be the answer to that and DJ Reed was supposed to be a nickel wedge last season before he reprise the role of Flowers on CB2.

What did the Seahawks do? Almost nothing substantial.

Ahkello Witherspoon was the team’s most notable offseason signing as outside cornerback. A disappointing preseason saw him traded to the Pittsburgh Steelers where he has since played a grand total of 4 defensive snaps and was a healthy zero twice. Here is one of those four shots.

With one of their three picks in the 2021 NFL Draft, the Seahawks selected Tre Brown in the fourth round. He’s on the injured list with a knee injury and there was no idea he would play his way into the starting lineup.

Pierre Desir, Damarious Randall, Gavin Heslop, Will Sunderland, Bryan Mills and Jordan Miller have all had the opportunity to do something at camp and in the preseason to justify a place on the roster. None of them were on the squad and only Heslop is even on the training squad. Seattle traded to Sidney Jones and John Reid, signed Bless Austin and claimed Nigel Warrior – combined they have just one defensive snap (Reid) in a Seahawks uniform. Jones’ ceiling seemed high enough before his pre-draft injury, and now staying healthy is a constant enough problem for him that realizing his potential seems unlikely.

So after a whole offseason signing fringe players and adding a pick on Day 3, the Seahawks have decided to move Reed to the left side and Flowers to his familiar good spot. Indeed, Reed got a promotion and Flowers got his old job back.

Bearing in mind that DVOA doesn’t really get more reliable until later in the season, the Seahawks’ pass defense is 27th. The secondary has no interceptions and only one pass defended, which is absolutely shocking to think of what the Seahawks defense was.

Reed was beaten for two touchdowns last week and PFF says Flowers gave up 7/7 for 78 yards and four downs against Minnesota in what has to be one of Pete’s worst defensive efforts in all. I love DJ Reed, but he’s arguably played out of position and at 5’9 ” he’s one of the shortest outside cornerbacks in the league. Flowers is who he is at this point and I honestly feel bad for him reading this quote.

Minimal investment in a weak position yields predictable results. Doesn’t this sound familiar to anyone?

This is a Field Gulls title just before the start of the 2020 regular season.

You might recall that a major issue last season ahead of the mid-season trade for Carlos Dunlap was the lack of a pass rush without excessive blitzing. It was a known issue of the 2019 season, even with Jadeveon Clowney’s big business. The team did not re-sign Clowney in 2020 and opted for the “quick pass by committee” angle of Benson Mayowa, Bruce Irvin and lots of hope that LJ Collier, Rasheem Green, Shaquem Griffin and Alton Robinson would be young impact players. Darrell Taylor would have been part of that group of young players, but ended up missing the entire season.

Lo and behold, the Seahawks’ pass rush has been dismal throughout the first half of the season, even when you added to their blitz.

When the Seahawks haven’t blitzed, their 18.7% pressure rating with a standard four-stroke run is the third lowest in the league, according to ESPN charts.

Heading into the San Francisco game, the Seahawks were generating pressure on just 23.1% of overall opposing quarterback drops. It was the fourth-lowest rate in the NFL and almost identical to what the Seahawks produced last season, when their lack of a consistent pass rush was also an Achilles heel.

Here we are a year later and John Schneider and Pete Carroll did the same thing but in cornerback. You could say there’s a double flashback because the pass rush has been ho-hum for three weeks this season.

I believe these two things are simultaneously true:

• This defensive list is not among the top echelons of the NFL in terms of overall talent.
• Ken Norton Jr doesn’t get the most out of his players.

But we’re here to talk about the front office and really just Schneider and Carroll. I have to couple them because it seems Schneider tends to escape scrutiny, almost as if to suggest that Carroll is an energetic chewing gum dictator surrounded by men yes. Longtime readers of the Field Gulls may recall the “Q / PM” connotation this couple received at the start of the era, but I suspect some have been riding this a little too long.

Last year, the Seahawks got off with a terrible defense and were 6-2 at the halfway point thanks to a high-flying offense paired with that defense’s only saving grace: turnovers. They are already at 1-2 this year, turnovers do not occur and the offense only scores in half. This team could be in serious danger by the end of next Thursday night against the Los Angeles Rams.

The Seattle front office has played with fire one too many times and this time around a bad process can ultimately lead to a bad outcome.