No Disguise Needed
This season the Seahawks have showed and played the same look pre- and post-snap on 87.7% of plays. They run with a single-high safety in a ‘middle of the field closed’ look 78% of the time, and that includes all of the situations that practically dictate they won’t run with just one high safety. In the open field you can practically guarantee you’ll be looking at one deep safety. When Peyton Manning lines up across from the Seahawks’ defense he knows exactly what he is going to see – a simple Cover-3 or Cover-1 look, with Earl Thomas sitting in the middle of the field.
He’ll be staring at something that looks like this:
The Seahawks run more or less the same coverage most of the time simply because they can. They have better players in their secondary than most teams so they don’t have to overthink things. Earl Thomas is one of just a few safeties in the game with the range to make playing a single-high defense viable and have an impact while doing so. Richard Sherman is a lockdown corner on one side and, since coming into the lineup on the other side, Byron Maxwell has almost identically matched Sherman’s coverage numbers.
In the middle, Kam Chancellor gives them a physical, big-hitting presence of an additional linebacker and when they go to nickel or dime formations they have talented defensive backs to bring in.
They can afford to line up and have an offense know roughly what they’re looking at.
Obviously they can still play different coverages from the same shell. They can and will still play man or zone on the outside and underneath depending on the personnel and formation they face, and they’ll certainly try and disguise a few things to throw Manning off, but being able to eliminate much of a defensive playbook with a simple glance is big for an offense.
