Seattle's pressures can beat your numbers advantages.

Watch Seattle's pressures can beat your numbers advantages. - Athlon Sports on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00They don't blitz a lot. The Seahawks have rushed four defenders on 80% of their snaps,

00:04the NFL's third highest rate, but their 12 sacks are tied for the league lead with the

00:08Denver Broncos and the Los Angeles Rams, and their pressure rate of 24.7 ranks 7th best

00:14in the league. So how does McDonald put offenses in a blender without a signature concept?

00:19On the front end, his pressure calls are real problems, but it's so hard to call protections

00:23against them, you never know who's rushing and from where and who's dropping into coverage

00:27and from where. Let's take a couple of pressures against the Cardinals on Thursday night as

00:32examples. This isn't really complicated stuff per se, and that's by design, but McDonald has

00:37his guys so in sync, it usually works. With eight seconds left in the first quarter,

00:42Seattle lined up in a familiar overload front concept. Three to one side, a linebacker as

00:46a stand-up three-tech to the other side, and an edge rusher to that side looking to benefit

00:50from one-on-ones. The 49ers do this with the great Fred Warner as a stand-up three-tech

00:55lot. Warner can either pressure or drop from them. In this case, linebacker Ernest Jones,

01:00a very underrated part of this defense, dropped into coverage to rob the middle of the field.

01:05Now it was a four-man pressure against five blockers, but the Seahawks still had the advantage

01:08because Leonard Williams and Demarcus Lawrence performed a stunt to mess with the protection

01:13that sent Lawrence to the other side of the field as a looper. Jones' drop forced Kyler

01:17Murray to bail because he didn't have a clear look downfield, and with Lawrence chasing him down,

01:21Murray ran out of bounds. That was third and 15, so drive over.