The Seahawks' defense is anything and everything all at once.

Watch The Seahawks' defense is anything and everything all at once. - Athlon Sports on Dailymotion

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00:002025 Seahawks are coverage agnostic. They don't have a type of coverage they rely on beyond LLs.

00:06This season they've run cover 1 10% of the time, cover 2 15% of the time, cover 3 31% of the time,

00:13cover 4 16% of the time, and cover 6 22% of the time. They don't blitz a lot. The Seahawks have

00:19rushed four defenders on 80% of their snaps, the NFL's third highest rate, but their 12 sacks are

00:25tied for the league lead with the Denver Broncos and the Los Angeles Rams, and their pressure rate

00:29of 24.7, ranks 7th best in the league. So how does McDonald put offenses in a blender without a

00:35signature concept? On the front end, his pressure calls are real problems, but it's so hard to call

00:40protections against them, you never know who's rushing and from where and who's dropping into

00:44coverage and from where. Let's take a couple of pressures against the Cardinals on Thursday night

00:49as examples. This isn't really complicated stuff per se, and that's by design, but McDonald has

00:54his guys so in sync, it usually works. With eight seconds left in the first quarter, Seattle lined

01:00up in a familiar overload front concept. Three to one side, a linebacker as a stand-up three-tech

01:05to the other side, and an edge rusher to that side looking to benefit from one-on-ones. The 49ers

01:10do this with the great Fred Warner as a stand-up three-tech lot. Warner can either pressure or drop

01:15from there. In this case, linebacker Ernest Jones, a very underrated part of this defense, dropped

01:20into coverage to rob the middle of the field. Now it was a four-man pressure against five

01:24blockers, but the Seahawks still had the advantage because Leonard Williams and Demarcus Lawrence

01:28performed a stunt to mess with the protection that sent Lawrence to the other side of the

01:32field as a looper. Jones' drop forced Kyler Murray to bail because he didn't have a clear

01:36look downfield, and with Lawrence chasing him down, Murray ran out of bounds. That was

01:401315, so drive over.