Meet Me at the Quarterback - It's Time to Talk About the Seattle Defence

By Lee Wakefield

Here we go then, we’ve reached the point in the season where it’s time to talk about the Seattle Seahawks’ defence. 

This is truly one of the best units in the league. I wanted to get this out last week, but opted to go in a different direction, since Seattle were coming off a defeat to the Rams. However, after a win against the Titans, where the defence only conceded 10 real points – the Titans had a garbage-time touchdown with 43 seconds remaining, and a punt-return touchdown in the third quarter, both from the impressive rookie Chimere Dike – it’s time to talk about one of the best units in the NFL. 

Let’s look at what makes this a special group, the players who are key to the operation and the coach who is knitting it all together.

Let's look at Seattle’s Numbers

In terms of basic sack numbers, even weeks after writing my Denver article, the Broncos are still out in front of everyone else with 49 sacks on the season. Myles Garrett’s Herculean season has propelled Cleveland to second, and surprisingly, the Atlanta Falcons (shout out to my esteemed colleague, Thomas Willoughby) are third-placed in the team sacks list at this stage of the season. Atlanta spent two first-round picks on pass rushers, I guess, but it just feels like they don’t really do pass rushers, historically. 

Anyway, the Seahawks are fourth with 36 sacks, so far. But that’s only part of the story.

As we’ll explore in the next segment, those sacks and the general pressure that they are creating is coming from all angles, which makes them very dangerous, as they’re unpredictable and difficult to game plan for.

Overall, Seattle are 1st in the NFL by defensive DVOA, at -17.9%, a whole percentage point above the Rams in second place.

(Is it becoming pretty clear that the Seahawks and Rams are the best two teams in the league this year? And do I need to knock out one of these reviews for the Rams’ defence next?).

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The unit as a whole is one that plays with synergy, and each section of the unit complements the others. There aren’t too many metrics that this defence is outside of the top ten, and overall, they’re currently holding opposing offences to 19.1 points per game, on average, so far this year.

Another big factor in how the Seahawks’ defence is playing is actually the Seattle offence. Until the Seahawks went to Los Angeles on November 16th, they had barely ever been behind in games. The Seattle offence is 1st in offensive DVOA, and most notably, Jaxon Smith-Njigba is having a historic wide receiver season… I’m not here to talk up offence, but these factors do allow the Seattle defence to go quarterback hunting on a regular basis. When that opportunity arises, there are plenty of players on this squad who are willing to take that invitation.

The Pieces of the Puzzle

This defensive front is one that’s full of good players, and crucially, they have depth.

They also have a couple of defensive backs that help with the pass rush in Devon Weatherspoon and Nick Emmanwori – more about him later – as well as linebackers like Tyreese Knight who can chip in.

Seattle lacks a true ace pass rusher, but via both the draft and free agency, have built a stable of six or seven defensive linemen who are all ready to make an impact on each and every game day.

The personnel are versatile. Leonard Williams, who is listed at 6’5 and 350 lbs, has the ability to play on the interior or off the edge. Uchenna Nwosu, 6’2, 265 lbs, an edge defender who has played off-ball earlier in his career. Boye Mafe, 6’4 and 262 lbs, a speedster off the edge. DeMarcus Lawrence, a similar body type to Mafe, even listed a little lighter, but is a more versatile and technical pass rusher compared to  Mafe.

I’ve not even mentioned guys like Derrick Hall, Byron Murphy II, or the fact that this team has  Jarran Reed on IR.

Recruitment has helped. Some of their high performers are reclamation projects, like Leonard Williams, who is on his third team. Lawrence was cast aside by Dallas… When things are going right for teams, it tends to be because the front office’s decisions have been proven to be correct.

Or, it’s that the coaching staff make those decisions correct. And one thing is for sure, Mike McDonald and his defensive staff are managing to squeeze all of the available juice out of this orange, in order to make John Schneider and the front office correct more often than not. 

Six players from this defensive line group have more than 30 pressures so far this season.

In addition to this, linebacker Drake Thomas has 12 pressures, Witherspoon and Emmanwori have combined for a further 15 pressures as defensive backs.

With their frontline rushers, they get interior pressure with Williams and Byron Murphy, who have 15 sacks between them, and from the outside, Nwosu and Lawrence have 14 sacks between them.

Overall, Seattle throws pressure at opposing QBs from all angles. But this isn’t a Brian Flores-style all-out attack kind of pass rush plan from this team. With pressure, McDonald is kind of like Spielberg when he was directing Jaws.

The idea that pressure is coming is always lingering, just as the shark was. The problem is you don’t know when or where they’re coming from. That’s what strikes fear into quarterbacks so effectively.

Mike McDonald, the Conductor of the Orchestra

McDonald, 38, was a long-time Ravens assistant coach, working his way up from an intern, to defensive assistant, to defensive backs coach, then leading the linebackers. After three years as Wink Martindale’s linebackers, the opportunity arose to lead a unit of his own. With that, McDonald left the Ravens to take the defensive coordinator job at Michigan under then-Head Coach Jim Harbaugh.

After a year at Michigan, he was hired by John Harbaugh, back in Baltimore to be defensive coordinator. This is a position McDonald held for two years.

In year one, the 2022 season, Baltimore held opponents to 18.5 points per game in the regular season. The unit then followed in 2023 by holding their opponents to 16.4 points per game across their 17 regular-season games. Meaning that combined with this season so far, Mike McDonald-led defence’s worst points allowed per game was last year’s Seahawks team, which allowed 21.6 per game.

After impressing as an NFL defensive coordinator, he jumped up another rung of the career ladder to become Seattle’s head honcho ahead of the 2024 season.

As mentioned above, Seattle lives in nickel, and they are the sort of unit that doesn’t allow the offensive personnel to dictate their personnel groupings.

If you’re an offence, and you roll out 12 or even 13 personnel – typically run-first, big-bodied groupings – most teams in the NFL will match with base, so typically putting a third linebacker on the field, which usually gives a match-up advantage to the offence in the passing game. Not Settle, though. They feel like they’ve got enough size, athleticism and want-to to defend the run in their nickel grouping, even when bigger bodies are lined up across from them. Which the numbers seem to bear this. History would suggest that McDonald knows how to run a defence and is at the beginning of growing his own “coaching tree” with Chargers DC and former Michigan colleague, Jesse Minter, running a similar style of defence.

McDonald’s units get pressure at a good rate, but what sets him apart from other defensive maestros is that in order to put pressure on the QB, he doesn’t blitz all that often. Seattle blitzes at one of the lowest rates in the NFL. But what they do, do at a high rate is use stunts and twists, they utilise those versatile body types that they have up front and misdirection. On top of that, they use sim-pressures, dropping a defensive linemen out and bringing a linebacker or a defensive back.

So alongside their heavy dose of stunts, they sprinkle in other plates where pressure comes from different angles.

As I said, the QB knows there’s likely to be pressure, but when and where it’ll come from, that’s the mystery. That’s what keeps this defence in front and able to dictate to the offence.

Nick Emmanwori, the Straw that Stirs the Drink

Seattle traded up 17 spots in the second round to take Emmanwori with the 35th pick of the 2025 draft. In doing so, they handed the Texans a third-round pick, so the Seahawks wanted an immediate return on their investment, and that’s exactly what they’ve received.

Emmanwori is an exceptional athlete, scoring a perfect 10 on RAS with his pre-draft testing. He plays with aggression, reminding Seahawks fans of a certain Kam Chancellor, and has the versatility that allows modern NFL defensive play callers to do a lot of things with their personnel groupings.

That’s exactly what Seattle does, but not in the way you’d think.

Having an elite, big-nickel player is the key to how modern defences want to play. Some want to use this player to do a lot of things – Think, how the Chargers used to use Derwin James under Brandon Staley. But Seattle wants to play pretty much the same eleven guys, in a nickel formation, pretty much every play, and let them figure it out. Seattle leads the NFL in nickel defence snaps by a long way.

Having a guy who can cover the slot, defend the run and also, on occasion, rush the passer unlocks being able to do this for Seattle and Mike McDonald.

We’ve seen it this season with Kyle Hamilton in Baltimore, with Derwin James, Talanoa Hufanga in Denver, it’s also what has made Minkah Fitzpatrick the player he’s been throughout his career.

That is the plan the Seahawks had for Emmanwori, and why they traded up for him last spring.

The rookie has had an excellent start to his career, and he’s covering all of those roles with McDonald’s defence. The counting stats might not be eye-popping, but he’s having an impact on the games he’s appearing in. Whilst he’s listed as a safety, he does occasionally add an auxiliary body to the selective Seattle pass rush, which is causing headaches for QBs.

Emmanwori isn’t a full-time pass rusher by any means, but is a vital cog in their rush plan and in their defence overall. 

Final Word

Mike McDonald is one of the best young Head Coaches in the league, and this unit is giving Seahawks fans flashbacks to the glory days of The Legion of Boom defence.

Whether this defence will have the longevity of gravitas of that unit, or whether Seattle will win a Super Bowl under McDonald, as they did with the Legion of Boom, remains to be seen.

However, McDonald is bucking the trend as a defensive-minded head coach who is piloting one of the better teams in the NFL.

Regardless of that, for now, it feels like McDonald in Seattle is going to be a long-term marriage, and he’ll be given the time, space and resources to develop these ideas over time.

The exciting thing about this for fans of the team, or fans of defensive football, is that this is what Sean McVay has managed to do over his time in Los Angeles, but on offence. The Rams have changed and evolved, and it’s pushed the sport forward! McDonald existing in the same division and doing similar work on defence is going to lead to absolute blockbuster match-ups twice a year, and it should push the boundaries of defensive football in the NFL for years to come.

Lee Wakefield

NFL Content Lead

Lee Wakefield IS A defensive line enthusiast, Chargers Sufferer, and LONG-TIME writer and podcaster with a number of publications. @Wakefield90 on twitter/X.