They haven’t given up a touchdown since before Thanksgiving.
They are dominating. They are doing it in a way that has the lone guy on the team still around from the “Legion of Boom” days, Jarran Reed, saying this defense reminds him of that Super Bowl-winning one.
So what is the fundamental reason for the Seahawks’ rise to 10-3, for being at the top of the league, particularly on defense entering their game Sunday against Indianapolis? That is, the Colts (8-5) with their 44-year-old Grandpa quarterback Philip Rivers coming out of five years of retirement?
It’s stopping the run.
Seattle hasn’t allowed a running back to gain 100 yards against its defense in 22 games. It’s the longest current streak in the NFL. It’s two short of the franchise record set by the — you guessed it — L.O.B. Seahawks, from 2014-16. That spanned the franchise’s last Super Bowl season.
You have to go back 14 months, to Oct. 27, 2024, when Buffalo’s James Cook romped across Lumen Field for 111 yards on 17 carries in the Bills’ 31-10 win to find the last back to gain 100 on the Seahawks.
Reed, Leonard Williams, DeMarcus Lawrence, Byron Murphy, Ernest Jones and their Seattle defensive front want to break that decade-old record.
“That’s a big deal,” Williams, the Pro Bowl defensive tackle/end, said this week. Seattle’s origins for stopping the run
Most of the attention on the Seahawks’ defense is on the splashy play-making of two-time Pro Bowl Devon Witherspoon. It’s on the wonders of do-it-all rookie Nick Emmanwori, a rising candidate for NFL defensive rookie of the year. Folks focus on the wizardry Mike Macdonald, the 38-year-old head coach and defensive mastermind, performs weekly on perplexed, hesitating offenses, with new disguises and schemes.
But the guts of Seattle’s defensive success are less sexy. It’s the big uglies on the Seahawks’ front. Those guys are shutting down running games on early and short-yardage downs.
Those run-stoppers hold the key to Seattle’s quest to win the final four regular-season games and the NFC West for the first time since 2020. Four wins would clinch for the Seahawks the number-one seed with a first-round bye and home field in the conference playoffs next month.
The reason the Seahawks are number one in the NFL in point differential (+161) is they are second in rushing yards per carry (3.8), second in yards per play (4.5), second in points allowed (17.4), third in rushing touchdowns allowed (seven) and fourth in rushing yards allowed per game (91.2). That is putting quarterbacks in must-throw, third-and-longs instead of third-and-shorts on which the playbook is wide open. The defense’s mantra against the run: “Every blade of grass.” As in, don’t give up any of it.
“It’s always a premium for us,” Macdonald said. “Our standard. How we want to play defense. “It’s a ‘12 as One’ type of mentality.”
That’s another of the coach’s credos.
Stopping the run allows Macdonald to get creative in coverages and blitzes when he knows foes have to pass. That’s how Seattle is fourth in the league in sacks, with 41, and been on pace for the second-most in team history for a season.
The first full week for Jones, their vital middle linebacker, was November 2024, the week their streak of not allowing a 100-yard rusher began. Macdonald and general manager John Schneider saw inside linebackers Tyrel Dodson and Jerome Baker getting dragged through the points of attack the first half of the 2024. They knew that had to change. They cut Dodson. They traded Baker and acquired Jones, the former Super Bowl-champion middle linebacker with the Los Angeles Rams.
Jones transformed the rush defense, and the Seahawks’ 2024 season. Seattle ended last year as one of the league’s best defenses. But losing five of their first nine games with Dodson and Baker failing to stop the run doomed their playoff chances. They went 10-7, but missed the postseason for the second time in three years.
This offseason, Macdonald and Schneider signed the “crazy as hell” Lawrence after his 11 seasons with four Pro Bowls on the Dallas Cowboys’ defensive line. This year, they’ve given Murphy what he deserved: more snaps than the dynamic tackle got as a rookie first-round draft choice in 2024. Murphy has gone from 49% of snaps last season to 69% now. “I love being out there,” Murphy said in the locker room in Atlanta last weekend after the Seahawks drilled the Falcons 37-9. “First down, third and long, third and short, it don’t matter. I’m all about the team. What they need me to do, I’m going to do it.”
Murphy (seven) playing most run and pass downs, Williams (seven) and Lawrence (five) get attention for the 19 sacks between them through 13 games. But they wouldn’t be getting all those sacks if they weren’t first stuffing running plays before those drop backs to pass. “Our mindset is: We’re gonna hunt,” Murphy said. “We tell each other that week in and week out.”
As Macdonald and defensive coordinator Aden Durde take pride in saying, almost in unison, and a lot: “You have to earn your right to pass rush.”
That is, by stopping the run.
“I think this is where it has to show up the most, honestly, making this final push in the fourth quarter of the regular season, going into the playoffs,” Williams said. “I think that old school style of hardball kind of matters most at this point.
“That’s something we’ve been harping on since OTAs, something Mike puts a lot of emphasis on, is stopping the runner running the ball.
“I talk about it every week, that it allows us to operate the way we want to as a defense when we’re able to stop the run. If we allow offenses to run the ball, we’re putting the keys in their hands. And, obviously, we don’t want that.
“Our defensive line takes pride in stopping the run.” Colts’ Jonathan Taylor: Big threat
Last weekend in Atlanta, the Seahawks stomped into the locker room at halftime. They weren’t playing to their standard; they weren’t stuffing Falcons running back Bijan Robinson. The league’s fifth-leading rusher had 61 yards on 13 carries. Seattle was in a slog, a 6-6 tie with the 4-8 Falcons.
In the second half, the Seahawks allowed Robinson just 25 yards. Lawrence hit him and forced him to fumble. Witherspoon recovered that. Seattle outscored Atlanta 31-3 in the second half to rise to 10-3.
This weekend, NFL rushing leader Jonathan Taylor (1,356 yards in 13 games) comes to Lumen Field.
“Man, great contact balance. He’s probably the fastest guy we’ve gone against so far,” Macdonald said. “Can outrun angles. (He’s) got really good acceleration, really good vision. He’s a really good back. He’s really good. “This is two in a row where we faced the league’s best, in my opinion.”
Taylor’s 247 rushes, 19 per game, are second-most in the league. The Colts are likely to lean on Taylor’s running even more on Sunday, with the Seahawks expecting Rivers to start at quarterback for the first time in five years. Rivers, father of 10, grandfather of one, will be on just three days of practice since signing out of retirement Wednesday. “Again, back-to-back weeks we’ve faced some of the best backs in the league,” Williams said. “I feel like we did a decent job, which still wasn’t up to our standard last week with Robinson.
“This week we’re facing Taylor, who is another great back. I think the challenge with him is his contact balance. I think it’s going to just take a swarm of us to get to the ball and gang tackle this guy, because he’s going to break tackles and make plays. He’s a great running back.
“But I think we just have to keep swarming and keep lining up, and hitting him over and over.”
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