Final defensive grades for the Seahawks in 2019

The Seahawks were a fairly successful football team once again in 2019. How much did the defense contribute to this? Here are the final grades.

The Seahawks defense was not very good in 2019, as much as we might want to sugarcoat it. In a lot of important metrics, Seattle was near the bottom of the NFL. Yards per game? Seattle was 26th. Points per game? Seattle was 22nd. The Seahawks allowed 4.9 yards a carry which ranked 28th in the league and 22 rushing touchdowns which ranked 30th.

I blame some of that on the defensive personnel, some on John Schneider who didn’t really do enough to address the defensive line needs last offseason and a bunch of it on defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. who simply isn’t aggressive enough and fails to attack an offense in ways that covers up his defenses weaknesses. Norton also doesn’t grow his players, and that is a huge reason to not bring him back in 2020.

But Seattle will bring him back because head coach Pete Carroll shows loyalty to his coaches even when it might be a detriment to the team. Norton Jr. failed as a defensive coordinator with the Raiders. It appeared at the time he did not have the players to succeed, but maybe it was the scheme or lack of aggressiveness in defensive playcalling instead.

Beyond Norton Jr., though, Seattle had some great talent and then a lot of not-good talent. Here are the grades for the Seahawks defense this season.