Seahawks 2019 defense vs 2018 defense: secondary and special teams

The Seahawks secondary doesn’t have any new starters, at least not yet. Did they add enough competition to improve their play in 2019?

The Seahawks continued their roster retooling in the secondary. The starters remain the same, basically. We’ll get into the “basically” qualification soon enough. The Hawks did add some competition, as always, so I won’t be surprised to see at least one of the starters in week one supplanted by the end of the season.

If by some unimaginable circumstance you’re new to the Land of Pete, the four returning starters from last year are as follows. Shaquill Griffin and Tre Flowers play cornerback with Griffin at left corner, which often faces the opponent’s best receiver. Griffin in particular struggled in coverage last year. Too often, he bit early on routes and was beaten downfield. Flowers fared better, especially considering he played safety in college. Both look to improve this year, although they each had a few struggles in preseason games.

At safety, the Hawks have Bradley McDougald at strong safety and Tedric Thompson at free. McDougald is one of the better safeties in the league and can play either position, although he does prefer to play in the box. Thompson, his counterpart at free safety, is better than adequate. No one will ever mistake him for the man he replaced in the lineup, Earl Thomas. So if you compare the secondary of 2019 to the unit that took the field at the beginning of 2018, this year’s edition isn’t nearly as good.

The Hawks have more candidates for the last line of defense. Rookie safety Ugo Amadi has made some spectacular plays this preseason. Fellow rookie Marquise Blair was highly touted coming into camp, but he’s been hampered by back trouble lately. Lano Hill has returned from his season-ending injury, and he’s in the mix at safety as well. So far, no one has stepped up, but I expect one of the three will push Thompson out of his starting role before the season is halfway done.

The other part of the “basically” qualification is that Seattle plays a lot of nickel packages. Last year’s slot corner, Justin Coleman, is long gone. He had an exceptional 2017 but dropped off a bit last year. Without him, the Seahawks have turned to a succession of defensive backs. Akeem King got 145 snaps on defense last year, while special teams captain Neiko Thorpe had 29 snaps. King will likely see a lot of snaps as the nickel, but the story doesn’t end there.

Seahawks have a lot of candidates for the nickel

As usual with the Seahawks, the picture gets more complicated from there. Seattle traded for corner Parry Nickerson, sending the Jets a conditional seventh-round pick in the 2021 draft. Clearly they see a future for Nickerson with the team, as they didn’t risk seeing him go to another team. And let’s not forget that long-time favorite DeShawn Shead was one of the first players cut. There’s been quite a lot of buzz he could return after week one. All signs point to the Hawks playing a lot of situational ball with the nickel, rotating players according to the opponent’s sets.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the special teams. Punter Michael Dickson returns, and he looks like he’s improved from his Pro Bowl rookie season. Seattle added another Pro Bowler in kicker Jason Myers. After he lost the job to Sebastian Janikowski in 2018’s camp, he crushed it for the Jets. The Seahawks wasted no time in getting him back to the Emerald City. He wasn’t perfect in the preseason, but he wasn’t Blair Walsh, either. And the Hawks re-signed long snapper Tyler Ott. Consistency is huge on special teams. Trust me, it’s almost always good when you don’t know the name of the long snapper. Special teams 2019 beats 2018.

The secondary is the one unit where I’m very cautious about predicting improvement. They could improve, sure, but neither Griffin nor Flowers looked markedly better in the preseason. Amadi made some great plays, but he is just a rookie. The one thing that gives more hope than any single player is the improvement of the Seahawks defensive ends. They should generate a much better pass rush, which will limit the amount of time defensive backs have to cover their responsibilities.  Still, I’ll call the 2019 edition as even with the 2018 team.