3 things the Seattle Seahawks need from the coaching staff in 2023
By Lee Vowell
Seahawks need Clint Hurtt to be more aggressive
Seattle not being overly aggressive on defense in 2022 made sense for a lot of reasons. First, defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt was in his first season as DC, and making a bunch of mistakes on sending blitzes might make a head coach question a DC's job abilities, especially if the DC happens to be a new one. Second, Seattle had several new players in different spots and the team couldn't be overly sure what it was going to consistently get, production-wise, from some guys.
And, of course, a third reason is that the Seahawks were seemingly going to count on safety Jamal Adams to be a huge part of what they did in terms of aggression, but then Adams got hurt halfway through Week 1. Hurtt, and even Pete Carroll, could be questioned on why they thought it wise to seemingly make any blitzes designed around Adams when Adams is a constant injury threat. But it did appear that in the little bit we saw Adams last year, the defense was going after the quarterback, but when Adams got hurt, that stopped.
In 2022, Seattle blitzed just 15.2 percent of the time, 31st in the league. The problem was that the Seahawks weren't hurrying quarterbacks from their base defense as quarterbacks were rushed to throw just 5.4 percent of the time, and this was 28th in the league. So many times, especially on third downs, quarterbacks could just sit back and wait...and wait...and wait some more before finding an open receiver in an effort to get to a new set of downs against Seattle. The Seahawks allowed 42.3 percent of third downs to be converted which was sixth-worse in the league.
But in 2023, Seattle has more talent overall on defense, better pass rushers on the defensive line with Dre'Mont Jones and Jarran Reed, more depth in the secondary after signing safety Julian Love, so there is no excuse for sitting back and letting opposing offenses say how the game is going to be played. With or without Jamal Adams - and likely without - Seattle needs to be a lot more aggressive this coming season.