RENTON — After a fifth consecutive dominant defensive performance, Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett raised a few eyebrows with a comment in the visitors’ locker room at University of Phoenix Stadium.
“We’re the best defense to ever play football,” Bennett told reporters after the Seahawks held the Cardinals to six points and 216 yards. “… When we line up and play the way we are capable of playing, I don’t think anybody can play with us.”
Surely this was just hyperbole coming from an excited young man in the heat of the moment after a game, right? The Seahawks’ defense, great as it may be, isn’t the best ever, is it?
Well, when you step back and look at what the Seahawks are doing in a historical context, Bennett might just be onto something. Maybe when Bennett says after Seattle’s victory over San Francisco two weeks ago that, “Statistically we’re probably one of the best defenses ever to play the game of football right now,” he might not be as crazy as former defensive greats Warren Sapp and Ray Lewis might think. Both Sapp and Lewis, who played for Super Bowl winning teams that come up in the greatest-defense-ever conversations (2002 Buccaneers and 2000 Ravens), reached out this week, Bennett said, to give him a hard time for those comments.
Bennett’s response? “They all got their time, but our time is now.”
And time is perhaps the most important part of any argument about the greatness of an NFL defense. The Seahawks likely will lead the NFL in scoring defense for a third consecutive season, and are a lock to lead the league in yards allowed for a second consecutive year. That would make them just the fourth team to lead the league in both categories in consecutive years, and the third to lead the league in scoring defense for three straight. Those accomplishments would be impressive in any era, but what makes the Seahawks’ dominance — both during the past three years and also during the past five weeks, when they’ve allowed just 6.6 points and 193.6 yards per game — truly special is that they’re doing it in an era when nearly every rule change is made to favor offenses.
The 1976 Steelers and the ‘85 Bears and plenty of other teams in the best-of-all-time debate put up better numbers than the 2013 or 2014 Seahawks. But back then defensive backs could be far more physical with receivers and no one had to worry about where they hit a player. Quarterbacks weren’t protected from the neck up and the knees down like they are now, which makes it considerably harder on today’s pass rushers who have to think not just about how they’re going to beat a blocker, but where they’re going to hit the quarterback if they get there so as to avoid a penalty and a fine.
I’m not arguing that rules aimed at player safety are a bad thing — we’ve learned so much about the serious long-term effects of head injuries in the past decade — but a side effect of those rules is that they make life harder on defenses.
“I’d love to see us back then; I’d love to see us have a chance,” cornerback Richard Sherman said. “I have no idea how we’d play. We might be terrible back then. They may rough us up and run us out the building, but I’d love to see us have a chance back then with the rules the way they are. No illegal touching, no defensive holding, no roughing the passer. Oh man, it’d be … I don’t know if Kam Chancellor would be fair for a lot of people. He stays in a dark place and I don’t know if enough people could bring the flashlight to get him out.”
On its own, the 2013 defense is one of the best ever. That group led the NFL in scoring defense, passing defense, total defense and takeaways, then punctuated it by holding an all-time great quarterback and highest scoring offense in NFL history to eight points in the Super Bowl. Combined with this team, which minus the takeaways is playing at as high of a level as last year’s team, and which in recent weeks has played better than it ever has, and you have over a two-year span something incredibly rare, especially if the Seahawks are able to keep it up through another Super Bowl run.
“I don’t think we’ll really realize how good we are until like 10 years from now when we go back and look at it,” linebacker K.J. Wright said. “But right now we’re definitely doing things that teams in the past haven’t done. It looks good, it feels good, but we’ve got to be able to finish strong.”
What makes Seattle’s run of dominant defense all the more impressive is that it appears to be sustainable in an era of free agency and a salary cap, mechanisms put in place to try to keep sustained dominance from happening (another thing this defense has going for it over earlier ones in the best-ever argument). Six of Seattle’s most important defensive players — Kam Chancellor, Earl Thomas, Richard Sherman, Michael Bennett, K.J. Wright and Cliff Avril — have signed long-term deals in the past two years, and Bobby Wagner figures to join that list soon. Shrewd talent evaluation, player development and Carroll’s underrated coaching and game-planning have not just helped Seattle built the league’s best defense; those are also reasons why it should stay good even when key players move on for various reasons in coming years. (Carroll for so long has been seen as a master motivator or a rah-rah guy that it’s easy to overlook that he also possesses one of the best defensive minds in football.)
And the players at the core of this defense feel like they’re still only getting better, if not physically then in their understanding of the game.
Take, for example, a play in the third quarter of last week’s game. As Sherman described it, Thomas noticed a formation they had studied in which Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald starts by running a shallow crossing route out of a bunch formation, but then turns up field on a wheel route looking for a big play. Thomas made sure Wagner saw it, too, then Wagner ran step for step with Fitzgerald down field. While Bennett’s pressure on Ryan Lindley forced a bad throw, a good one would have been contested by Wagner, with Thomas closing in from behind just in case Wagner couldn’t make the play.
There was so much on display on that simple incomplete pass — from Bennett’s pass-rush ability to Wagner’s speed to cover a receiver to, most importantly, a maturing defense’s ability to know what is coming.
“It was an incomplete pass and it doesn’t seem like a lot,” Sherman said. “But when you understand the game and you’re running routes for people and you’re calling out plays, it’s good defense.”
So good, in fact, that Bennett may be onto something when he calls it the greatest ever.
Herald Columnist John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com
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