‘Our Burden to Bear’: Seahawks Dealing With Good Problem as Secondary Gets Healthier
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Seattle Seahawks cornerback Devon Witherspoon (21) participates in pregame warmups magainst the San Francisco 49ers at Lumen Field. Credit: Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images [/caption]
RENTON, Wash. - As Seattle Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald would certainly attest, there’s no such thing as having too much talent at your disposal in the NFL.
But as Seattle gears up for a challenging Sunday night road tilt against Washington, Macdonald and the rest of his defensive coaching staff may have found themselves in a bit of a pickle with Pro Bowl cornerback Devon Witherspoon returning to action following a prolonged absence from a knee injury. While the former top five pick will undoubtedly be on the field for every snap as long as he stays healthy, how the team deploys him position-wise could look significantly different than it did at the start of the season thanks to the emergence of standout rookie Nick Emmanwori.
When the Seahawks opened the schedule against the 49ers in early September, Macdonald still wasn’t quite sure how Emmanwori would best fit into his defense, as the team needed to see him in real game action to get a better feel for how to maximize his immense athleticism and skill. At the time, Witherspoon had been penned in as the primary slot cornerback, a position he had thrived in his first two seasons as both a disruptive blitzer and physical run defender, with the rookie set to get his feet wet there while playing both safety spots as well as a money linebacker role.
Unfortunately, Seattle didn’t get to see the two dynamic talents together on the field very long, as Emmanwori suffered a high ankle sprain on the opening series of the game and missed three weeks recovering. Witherspoon finished the opener, but then missed five of the next six games battling a bruised knee, thrusting reserve Derion Kendrick into the slot before Emmanwori returned in Week 5 and began to eat away at his reps in quick fashion with stellar performance after stellar performance, including a pair of pass breakups in a Monday night win over Houston.
Traveling cross country to Landover, Maryland, Macdonald will finally get to see his two defensive weapons on the field at the same time for the first time in nearly two months, presenting a good dilemma for him, defensive coordinator Aden Durde, and the rest of the staff to tackle as they aim to put the best 11 players on the field and maximize Witherspoon and Emmanwori’s unique talents.
“I think if you look at it through those lenses, it's exciting that you have those two players that can play that position, which is awesome,” Macdonald said on Wednesday prior to practice. “We’ve got to make sure we put a tight enough plan [together] where we can take advantage of both skill sets. That's kind of our burden to bear as coaches to make sure that it's clean and clear so the guys can go play the way they can play. But you know how we feel about Spoon. The guy's a tremendous player and Nick is at the beginning of a great career. He's off to a great start.”
In an ideal world, the Seahawks would be able to start Witherspoon and Emmanwori together with both players seeing extensive snaps, if not playing the entire game. But schematically, that could be tricky to pull off, at least based on how Macdonald and Durde have utilized personnel in the first seven games of the season.
Per TruMedia, Seattle ranks 20th in the NFL using dime packages with six defensive backs on just 3.5% of their defensive plays. Instead, they have been heavy on nickel packages (87.5%) with five defensive backs on the field at the highest rate in the NFL, mixing and matching three cornerbacks or three safeties on the field at the expense of a linebacker or a defensive lineman.
Based on comments from the coach on Wednesday, however, those numbers may not be a reflection of what Macdonald wanted to do. Since Witherspoon, Emmanwori, and Pro Bowl safety Julian Love have each missed at least three games due to injury, the Seahawks have had to play musical chairs in the secondary and adaptation has been a means for survival, with those absences limiting his ability to effectively use dime groupings in the way he likely envisioned at the start of the season.
With that said, Macdonald indicated schematic changes haven’t been based off personnel as much as Seattle has made alterations to fit what the team does best, which can take time to figure out in the early stages of a season.
“We've detoured pretty significantly from where we thought we were going to be at the beginning of the season, and that's not really personnel driven,” Macdonald explained. “I think it's really what we're doing well and what our guys have shown that they're good at, which is good. To me, that paints a clear picture, means we're watching our players and we're listening to them. We're listening to them when they tell us through how they play what they do well. That happens every year, but I'd say, let me be clear, it's not personnel driven. It's really what we're doing well.”
What does that mean in regard to how the Seahawks plan to use Witherspoon and Emmanwori together? With Macdonald not offering up any hints this week and playing the coach speak card, it will be fascinating to see how the dominoes fall on Sunday night and how their respective usage may impact the playing time of other defenders moving forward.
Given Emmanwori’s stature at 6-3, 228 pounds, Seattle may be more inclined to use dime sets than it has been in the first seven games, which likely would push Drake Thomas off the field in favor of a sixth defensive back. During training camp, the rookie saw a handful of snaps as a WILL linebacker and also worked off the edge, so it’s possible the Swiss army knife could be fully unleashed in this capacity to allow Witherspoon to still play in the slot and keep boundary cornerbacks Riq Woolen and Josh Jobe on the field as well.
But if Macdonald has concerns about stopping the run out of dime, which he hinted at on Wednesday, getting Witherspoon and Emmanwori on the field together will require some juggling in the defensive backfield. To this point, Emmanwori has played a total of one snap as a free safety and many of his 44 box snaps functioned as a linebacker more than a strong safety, and while he has the ability to play both of those positions, that would mean Ty Okada comes off the field after playing quite well in four previous starts replacing Love. Such a scenario could certainly be a possibility with Okada being a sub-package safety instead of a starter, though it would put a lot of pressure on the rookie doing something he hasn’t done much at all this year.
As the more likely scenario, at least in the short term, the Seahawks could stick with Emmanwori as the primary nickel defender, offering elite size for defending athletic tight ends as well as having the burst to cover speedy receivers as well. Witherspoon would then slide to the outside, forcing either Woolen or Jobe to the bench. Based on lack of consistency, Woolen would seem like the odd man out, and if he did lose significant playing time on Sunday, that would only pour more gasoline on the flames regarding trade rumors that have swirled all season thus far heading towards Tuesday’s deadline.
In the end, Macdonald may do a blend of the two approaches, playing a bit more dime to keep all three of his top cornerbacks as well as Emmanwori and Okada on the field together while also doing some shuffling in nickel sets to get Witherspoon and Emmanwori on the field together as much as possible. As always is the case, game planning for individual opponents will play into those distributions as well. Either way, the coach isn’t going to complain about having to make difficult decisions based on having too many quality football players available. It’s a situation many other teams would envy.
Nonetheless, with only 11 players allowed on the field at a time, sacrifices will have to be made for the better of the team. Starting on Sunday night just outside the nation’s capital, that onus will fall on Macdonald and his staff to figure out how to navigate those waters and keep everyone happy while putting the best defense on the field they can and play to the strengths of Seattle’s personnel.
