Seahawks offense has a coaching problem

If the Seattle Seahawks offense is going to get things turned around, the coaches first have to look in the mirror and recognize they are part of the problem.

There is plenty of blame to go around for why the Seattle Seahawks offense has been rather putrid for much of this season. Wilson’s injuries and mistakes haven’t helped, and neither has the less-than-competent play of the offensive line.

The Seahawks offensive coaching staff doesn’t deserve a pass here either. Both offensive line coach Tom Cable and offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell have contributed to Seattle’s anemic offensive production.

Good coaches put their players in a position where they can be successful. That hasn’t been happening frequently enough for the Seahawks offense.

Penalties

Penalties come in a lot of varieties. Most defensive penalties come from guys being aggressive, and it is tough to take issue when it is just guys trying to make plays.

The Seahawks offense is getting killed by avoidable penalties that don’t fall in that category. They’ve been called for 11 false start penalties, which is 11 too many. This offense cannot afford those types of mental mistakes.

The worst of Seattle’s penalty woes are the 16 holding penalties (14 accepted) by the offensive line. Most offensive holding penalties are the result of poor technique, and thus are avoidable as well.

The big issue here is that Seattle’s offensive line is completely undisciplined. Both mentally and physically, this unit does not regularly do what they need to do in order to be successful.

At some point, that falls on the coaching. We are well passed that point.

You play how you practice. Tom Cable lets guys be sloppy with their technique in practice, and thus they are sloppy during games.

Blocking scheme issues

One of the big issues that the offense has had this season has been blocking designs that set the linemen up to fail. This isn’t referring to asking talent-challenged players like Bradley Sowell to block guys like Robert Quinn either.

Instead, I’m talking about poorly designed blocking alignments that have little-to-no chance of success. Take this example, George Fant to asked to reach block a defender that is more than two positions inside of him.

It is impossible to ask Fant to catch up to the DT here. He ended up chasing him across the formation before making a last-second dive to try get a cut block in before the defender got to Christine Michael. That dive led to a clipping penalty.

Also, this next example is of a pass protection scheme that makes no sense, but it is something the Seahawks have been doing regularly (without success) all season. The Seahawks had Fant down block on the DT, and expected Ifedi to pull all the way from RG in time to pick up the defensive end coming off the left side.

As you can probably guess, Ifedi was late. The play-action didn’t hold the DE long enough for Ifedi to get across the formation, and thus Wilson was sacked.

Cable’s protection design here is overly-complicated for no reason. Even if it worked, there’s nothing to be gained by doing it this way.

Cable decided to get cute and show he can be creative, and all he did was set Ifedi and the offense up to fail.