Super Bowl LVII: Lessons the Seattle Seahawks can learn
Lesson for Seahawks number 2: Impactful Assistant Coaches
While it can be tough to lose an assistant coach, it’s also a sign that your franchise is doing things well, and someone else wants to imitate your success. This offseason we’ve heard that assistant coach Sean Desai is interviewing and likely to end up as Denver’s defensive coordinator. We also heard that QB coach Dave Canales is interviewing for multiple offensive coordinator jobs. This is bittersweet, but needs to continue to be the norm going forward.
The Eagles and Chiefs for the past half decade have had numerous assistant coaches move on to coordinator and beach coaching jobs. There might not be a better quartet of coordinators in this year’s Super Bowl than Steve Spagnuolo, Eric Bienemy, Jonathan Gannon and Shane Steichen. All have made their mark on their teams and will likely see head coaching opportunities on the horizon if they so choose.
The Seahawks used to have this dilemma when defensive coordinators Gus Bradley and Dan Quinn were getting scooped up, and OC Darrell Bevell was getting multiple interviews. Good coaching in the NFL is arguably more valuable than in any other sport, and when teams aren’t lining up to interview Shane Waldron or Clint Hurtt, that’s not great.
Lesson for Seahawks number 3: Aggressive Leadership
Both of these franchises are great examples of self awareness. The Eagles moved on from their Super Bowl winning head coach and franchise QB two years after winning the championship. They knew they had a window after striking gold with Jalen Hurts, and went to work on building a team overflowing with talent this season. General Manager Howie Roseman resigned his franchise stalwarts in Jason Kelce and Fletcher Cox for one last run.
He signed Haason Reddick who became a sack machine. They acquired Darius Slay, AJ Brown, Robert Quinn and Chauncey Gardner-Johnson who have all made massive plays. They signed Ndamukong Suh and Lival Joseph to beef up their run defense in the middle of the season. They knew they had a special window this year, and while they were going to have multiple replacements needed in the offseason, they left no doubt that they were all in.
The Chiefs knew they needed to retool their defense after they failed to stop Tom Brady in the 2018 AFC championship. They traded a first round pick to the Seahawks for Frank Clark, and signed safety Tyrann Matheiu. The result was a defense improving from 24th in the league to 7th, and they won the Super Bowl. In 2020, they were embarrassed by the overwhelming pressure of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defense in the Super Bowl. It was only one game, but they knew they needed to make an adjustment. They were able to completely rebuild their offensive line, trading for Orlando Brown and drafting Creed Humphrey and Trey Smith.