RENTON — If the Seahawks’ locker room didn’t know already, they do now.
You don’t perform and aren’t fitting what Mike Macdonald wants on defense, you not only won’t play — the rookie head coach may send you out of Seattle.
Jerome Baker wasn’t defending the run at weakside linebacker. Tyrel Dodson wasn’t strong enough to take on blockers and tackle ball carriers at middle linebacker. Last month the Seahawks traded Baker and a fourth-round draft choice to Tennessee to get a new middle linebacker who in four NFL seasons has proven he does stop the run.
Presto! Ernest Jones IV is Seattle’s new middle linebacker.
Two games into starting at Baker’s old weakside-linebacker spot, Dodson wasn’t stout enough for Macdonald there, either. Monday, the team waived Dodson. The Miami Dolphins claimed Dodson off league waivers Tuesday.
The defensive signal-caller who played 98% of snaps the first half of this season didn’t just get benched. He got cut.
Julian Love noticed.
“I’ve been calloused-up and have seen it,” the veteran, Pro Bowl safety said Wednesday in a hallway of the Seahawks’ facility. “But it’s a good reminder for young guys that it’s a business.
“However they want to decide things upstairs is how it will go. You just have to be able to shake, and just, when you’re on the field it’s your time just trying to make the most of it.”
Tyrice Knight definitely noticed.
He’s the rookie linebacker whom the Seahawks have given a starting job to by shedding veteran starters Baker and Dodson.
“I think it just shows the locker room everybody is being held accountable to the same standard, but nobody should be higher or lesser than anybody,” Knight said before practice Wednesday.
Macdonald has accomplished putting the locker room on notice and refreshing his 4-5 Seahawks, who are near the bottom of the NFL in run defense for the second consecutive season.
Sunday will be a stern test to see if he’s accomplished improvement in the game. Christian McCaffrey and the rugged San Francisco 49ers (5-4) are going to be running right at Knight, Jones and Macdonald’s remodeling defense in their NFC West game in Santa Clara.
With McCaffrey out injured the Niners had third- and fourth-string running backs romp for 228 yards the last time these teams met, Oct. 10 at Lumen Field. San Francisco’s 36-24 win wasn’t really that close. It was Seattle’s sixth consecutive loss in the rivalry.
Dodson played all 65 defensive snaps in that game. Baker played 64 of the 65.
Knight played zero. His only action that night was 15 plays on special teams.
Last year at this time Knight was preparing to play at Middle Tennessee State in Murfeesboro, Tennessee, in the next-to-last game of his college career for Texas-El Paso. Now the fourth-round draft choice this spring is preparing to start against the San Francisco 49ers.
Loooooooong way facing from Middle Tennessee State.
“It just lets me know that the whole organization’s got real trust in me, and I appreciate them for that,” Knight said.
“I’ve just got to take everything (in) that’s at hand, and make it seem like what they gave up wasn’t a bad decision.”
Tyrice Knight’s growth
Knight was the starting weakside linebacker for most offseason practices, training camp and the preseason games. That was while Baker, who signed this spring with Seattle for one year and $6 million guaranteed, was sidelined coming back from winter wrist surgery then by a longer-term hamstring injury.
Macdonald, publicly and inside the team building, gave Knight tough love assessing the rookie’s performances in spring and summer practices. He said Knight showed speed and the ability to get to the ball, but wasn’t always in the right place or doing what the defense assigned him to do at weakside linebacker.
He’s played 23% of defensive snaps through nine games. He spelled the injured Baker for two starts in seven games.
How much will that limited time help Knight in his new, primary role Sunday against the 49ers and beyond?
“A lot,” Macdonald said. “Experience…especially early in your career that learning curve really accelerates. I mean, if he hadn’t played we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation at this point.”
We’d probably be talking about Drake Thomas at middle linebacker as the next man up with Baker and Dodson gone.
Macdonald said the area Knight has had to improve most is taking on NFL blockers at the point of attack. The former linebackers coach calls it the most difficult skill a rookie linebacker has to learn in this league.
Knight nodded his head in acknowledgment of that.
“Really, it’s just recognition (of the blocks),” he said. “And just physicality. Playing (off blocks) with my hands.
“I’d say that’s the best aspect to my game. I think that’s why I’ve been (improving).
“I feel like if you strike first and you put your hands where they need to be, you should be able to get off blocks easy.”
Option: Feature Devon Witherspoon
Macdonald is highly unlikely to have the rookie Knight or the 5-foot-11 Thomas, a special-teams player, stay on the field for the 98% of the game. That was how much Dodson was at weakside linebacker post-Baker the last two games.
Those were Seattle’s home losses to Buffalo and to the Los Angeles Rams, part of the Seahawks’ five losses in their last six games.
Niners coach and play caller Kyle Shanahan is likely to send McCaffrey running and his offensive linemen that have dominated the Seahawks for years directly at Seattle’s weakside-linebacker spot Sunday. To counter and scheme around that potential liability, Macdonald has options.
The best one: Feature Devon Witherspoon more.
More nickel defense with five defensive backs and Devon Witherspoon inside as the cornerback “in the box,” in the middle of the field instead of Knight.
So far this season, through injuries to starting cornerbacks Riq Woolen and Tre Brown, Macdonald has had Witherspoon lined up outside as a cornerback for 207 snaps and inside as a slot, nickel defensive back 366 times. Many times when Witherspoon has been the nickel with three defensive backs on the field, Macdonald has taken out an interior defensive lineman.
But in the first game against the 49ers last month, Macdonald used “big nickel”; that is, a third safety as the fifth defensive back, with Witherspoon outside at cornerback. That third safety was K’Von Wallace. He played a season-high 42% of Seattle’s defensive snaps in that San Francisco game Oct. 10, against Shanahan’s heavy offensive formations for running the ball.
But now Wallace is on injured reserve. He injured his ankle in the Seahawks’ last game, on a kickoff against the Rams Nov. 3 before Seattle’s bye.
For this rematch against the 49ers, the Seahawks have only three healthy safeties on their active roster. Rayshawn Jenkins, who started that first game, is on injured reserve. Love and Coby Bryant, who played only eight defensive snaps as a sixth, “dime” DB in the first 49ers game, are the starting safeties now. The lone reserve is Jerrick Reed. He’s been injured and on special teams in his 1 1/2 seasons in the NFL since Seattle drafted him in the sixth round last year.
Rather than “big nickel” with so few safeties, Macdonald is likely to feature Witherspoon in the conventional nickel alignment Sunday. Play your best player more.
A Pro Bowl selection last year as a Seahawks rookie, Witherspoon is perhaps the player that impresses Macdonald most in his first Seattle defense.
Witherspoon has been criticized by some this season for having no interceptions, three passes defensed, no sacks and one quarterback hit through nine games. Through his first nine games played in the NFL last year he had a wowing, 97-yard interception return for a touchdown, 13 passes defensed, three sacks and four hits on quarterbacks.
“(You talk about) the lack of stats, but I will tell you what: This guy, you have ‘force multipliers’ on your football team, that is Devon Witherspoon,” Macdonald said, the son of a West Point graduate again using one of his favorite military terms.
“He’s an elite competitor. He’s a guy that, hopefully he’s leading the charge for us for a long time here. He’s worth the shout-outs.
“All the energy. We feed off this guy and how competitive he is. Plays the way we want to play. You kind of want to play him everywhere; that’s probably my biggest compliment to him. So it’s, trying to figure out how to play him best to affect the game. We’re thinking through that lens.
“Frankly, it’s nothing that he’s not doing that’s not creating production. Probably, you can put it on me to get him in better spots, so he can go affect the game.
“But that’s definitely a focus.”
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