Two on the move Darling Deep Speedways past Hell.
From the Baptist Health Studios inside the Baptist Health Training Complex.
This is Drivetime with Travis Wingfield. He's got my avans in the playoffs?
What is up, Dolphans And welcome to the Draft Time Podcast. I am your host, Travis Wingfield and on today's show, previewing the Seahawks game from the Baptist Health Studios inside the Baptist Health Training Complex. This is the Draft Time Podcast, Week three at the Seattle Seahawks Lumen Field up in beautiful Seattle, four h five kickoff on CBS. Gonna be mostly cloudy, about sixty seven degrees, a slight chance of rain.
But just know this.
Seattle showers are identical to Miami in one way and are opposite in another. Alike, they're usually little spurts here and there. The difference where it's a full fire hose of a shower down here. Seattle drizzles are usually just that, a light drizzle. So that's what you get for Sunday's weather. The Seahawks introduction our first NFC opponent of the season, which means a little bit longer for this portion of the show. Certainly longer than the Buffalo Bills. And I've
done what ten times now since I got here. The Seahawks won the last two meetings against Miami in the fourth quarter in twenty twenty down here and twenty sixteen back in Seattle, which is also the last NFL game that I have sat in the stands for. Man, if you could have told me eight years after that game i'd be here today, I would have told you you're crazy.
I just did the math and all this. Actually, I've been to thirty six games in this role, thirty five of those from the hard Rock Stadium press box, and one game back at MetLife in twenty twenty one, a big win over the Jets, and that does not include preseason contest.
And I thought of this because one.
Of our great beat writers down here, David faronas I love David's approach to things, tweeted something about the Kingdome and I was thinking, that's the park I've been to most, but it's actually probably quite comfortably hard Rocks Stadium. Now, I think if I can bind T Mobile Park in the Kingdome, that might take the crown.
But I digress. We're back in Seattle. It's going to be a beautiful day.
The Seahawks have experienced two vast transformations over the last three years, and it's also a good reminder here as this team and many teams are that things can change quickly for the positive in the NFL. The way they changed very drastically negative for the Dolphins over the last week. First, the end of the Russell Wilson era. You know, he ushered in the most successful era of Seahawks football, their
first and only Lombardi Trophy. Another trip back to the game the following year, a ton of playoff wins and crazy primetime games and a lifetime full of memories for Seahawks fans. Jealous, jealous, I'm jealous of that. And it happened very quickly because they were stuck in a bit of purgatory post Matt Hasselbeck and those were some good teams as well. But they had four, five, seven and seven wins seasons, and one of those seven to nine seasons won the NFC West.
That was a joke of a year. Back in twenty.
Eleven, I think it was then Russell Wilson arrives and it's eleven, thirteen, twelve, ten, ten, nine, ten, eleven and twelve wins. That's where I thought we were heading with our current set up here. Then he has that injury plague twenty twenty one season where it doesn't look as good and they move off him in twenty twenty two and they go right back to the playoffs that year at nine and eight under Gino Smith, while Wilson flutters in the Rocky Mountains. They finished the season with the
same record last year and missed the postseason. Funny how that goes sometimes. But even post Russ there was Pete Carroll who had a lot of the same concepts and principals. Run the football, play that old school style of cover three, keep it close, and try to win the game in the fourth quarter.
Yuck.
I hate that approach to football. But oh buddy, things have changed. They bring in Ryan Grubb from you dub that rhymes to run the offense. They bring in Mike McDonald not to be confused with Mike McDaniel, to implement his outstanding defense that he brought from Baltimore. And here they are two to zero with wins over Denver and New England, which, by the way, like schedule makers, I mean, everyone's gonna have different schedules to kick off the season.
But gosh, the Chargers got the Raiders, the Panthers, and the Steelers to start. The Seahawks get the Patriots and Broncos. I guess we had that last year. You know, the Chargers were a good team in Week one. They fell apart quickly after that, but Patriots and Broncos after that was pretty nice.
I digress, who cares?
I think this is a good roster with a good quarterback that will challenge to make the playoffs in the NFC, And in fact, I had them as my seven seed. But given the state of the Rams and all their injuries, shoot, they might be the second best team in that division. They're currently in first, so that's how they got here. Let's get into who they are today. Their offense. From a schematic standpoint, this will sound like a slight, but it's not in the slightest slight. This is a college offense.
The reason it's not a slight college offenses are all over the NFL these days, and they work very well. When you have a professional quarterback that understands spacing and how to attack said space, they'll motion to identify their coverages and then you get one of the most common concepts in college lots and lots of rub routes. They love to mesh, you pick, you rub, you corress you, numpskindding, but they like to do rub routes in any type of way against man coverage. If you run man, they
are going to run rubs. They'll throw a slot fade. They love to run dagger in other concepts. They get those inbreakers against that off coverage. They find ways to get additional hats down against the pass protection plan and show you so many potential rushers. Like for instance, there was a rep on Sunday where they motion Noah fam across the formation and have him pick up the left edge while they slide their protection to the right, and
it worked very effectively. Off of that, they love to run the motions under the formation, have that little slide route we saw in the flat to durham smythe like a thousand times last year. It's a wrinkle off their split flow action where he can act as a run blocker or factor into the route concept. So you get the same vertical and horizontal stretch that every coach has tried to popularize in the college game and frankly making its way to the NFL as well. The most college aspect.
They love to play from empty and it almost always comes from their eleven personnel package. And in fact, just to give you the numbers here, they stay in eleven personnel, which is one back, one tight end, three receivers. We know that by now right seventy five percent of the time they bring a second tight end into the game, so twelve personnel twenty one percent of the time, and they ran thirteen personnel three percent, So it's eleven and twelve not a lot of variety, which I do think
plays into Anthony Weaver's advantage. And that's basically all they do. They ran one rep from one personnel back in Week one. That's four wide and one tight end and no backs. They don't take Metcalf or Smith and Jigba off the field if they can help it. Both those players are
over eighty five percent this year. It's usually a first down twelve personnel play where they'll take one of those guys off the field, and it's usually Smith and Jigba, who's got like seven percent less than Metcalf's playtime so far this year. Tyler Lockett plays seventy percent and is also eighty percent. That's their core, not a lot of substitution, not a lot of Robbie Chosen getting thirty reps in two games. All really good playmakers and fan has good flexibility,
and they all have inside outside capability. They ran empty so far twenty snaps. They've gone from a shotgun with a sidecar back seventy snaps, and they've run single back from under center on twenty two snaps, so there is some raggy there. They've ran eight snaps from a true ie formation and they have one single snap out of the pistol, and that reduces your creativity in the run game, and I think it's why they've had a tough start so far with their running game. They don't have a
lot of connectivity inside. They're kind of working a new offensive line and they've had injuries that have impacted that, and I just don't think that their backfield setup is can do to what they want to be from a run game standpoint. It has a ways to go to get there. Miami has to find a way to not let it get there this week. But when you have that shotgun sidecar opposed to a pistol, it reduces your
flexibility with which direction the run can go. Like, you can still run your counterstep and your toss sweeps from that sidecar, but you can't have the same action and sell it the same way you can from pistol when the running back is behind the quarterback, which opens up left or right for either type of run action. You know, so hopefully Miami can shut down the run and create Russ rush situations on the third and critical downs. My last point here, I'm already so impressed by Grub's ability
to play sequence. They utilize a lot of love of the game routes, routes that are not in the progression but designed to free something else up, and their route trees look fantastic. It's not predictable, it's not static. It's very on the move, it's very innovative. It's very just doing as much as you possibly can to create conflict in space, and they've done a good job of that
through two weeks. How do you attack it? You know, if I sufficiently scared you with regards to getting stops on this offense, the way you do attack it is actually what I think coach Weaver best brings to the table and that's pressure. Gino has been under constant durest two games in. He's just really good at dealing with it.
If you go back to last week with the Vikings and what they did to the Niners, you can actually see it in the game last year with the Ravens versus both of us and the Niners two that same defensive game planner, of the same defensive philosophy. The way to really make this Shanahan offense, you know, make life tough on a Shanahan offense, is to insert an additional
hat into the box with that flexible hybrid capability. Right a player like for the Ravens Kyle Hamilton who basically can be a quasi linebacker in a pinch, or for the Vikings Josh Mattellus, who is the same exact version of that. And you spam the middle of the field from that look with extra help in the run fit,
and it creates vulnerabilities outside the numbers. On top of that, rerouting, throwing off timing chips and contact early on motion men tight ends, just trying to throw things out of sync. And then most importantly, you have to find a way to mixture coverages and force that quarterback to hesitate, even if just for a beat. If he plays in rhythm, you are toast. He's a good quarterback and you can't let him do that. All the movement, all the false keys.
You need linebackers that can really process that stuff. And thankfully, I think that's the strength of the two starters the Dolphins deploy and Jordan Brooks and David Long Junior. Let's go ahead and get into the big three here as we pivot into the offensive strengths of the Seahawks. Number one is you shall not pass via the run. I think my analogy is already a bit lost there, but this is a rundown point. You must stop their run game, aka prevent them from passing the lion of scrimmage, Thou
shalt not pass, You shall not pass. Their best passing elements are tied to the play action game, and that's tied to their ability to reduce the true drop bad game, which everybody seems to be catching on to that philosophy here in twenty twenty four, except for some of our friends on Twitter. It's ball one on one at this point, and the way you get true drop back game like you know, I mean, hell, we haven't We've seen it.
We've been stuck in third and long way too often this season, and that's been where the offensive wards have come up, you know. So the best way to get to that is to create third and six plus right, And that's what you have to do. For the Seahawks offense. Their primary guy, Kenneth Walker was down last week and it was just Zach Charbonay in his place, and Zach Charboney does not have the pop that his name would suggest he does. The only other ball carriers have been
Gino Smith and Laviska Channault, who has one rush. So I do wonder if they could be sitting on some more offense, uh, some more plays with balls in the hands of guys off the perimeter the receivers in the end a round game, especially now with a couple of weeks to prepare for the absence of Kenneth Walker should he miss this game, I think he probably will, So for this I'm looking at making sure you tackle Zach Sharbonnay.
His game is power and though he was drafted to play more of a gap scheme under Pete Carroll, he's highly regarded in this offense that really prioritizes zone and the ability to get the ball on the perimeter, which again expand your defense. That's what everybody wants to do. Expand create space, exploit space. But it's not just his power that you contend with. It's the power of that
line and all the ancillary parts. And there is a departure from years past when it was Damian Lewis, Evan Brown and Anthony Bradford, a collection of linemen that were all over three hundred and thirty pounds and all run variations of man gap scheme and power. But now it's Connor Williams, who I love our matchup on Connor with Zach and Kalaeis. Those are big bodies that I don't think he can block, which you know, and Connor Williams
tells you exactly what you need to know about their system. Right, it's zone, it's getting space, it's be athletic. But they also brought in Lake and Tomlinson, who was an utter failure in the Jets outside zone system. Decent with the Niners, but you know he's here at the Seahawks trying to have a reclamation and you know it didn't work for him last couple of years. And then Bradford is back the other the other starting guard at right at the
right guard spot. So while there is a good amount of size and power at those guard spots, they by design want to beat you across your face and get out into space. And once again that rhymes, Miami will
need to get off those blocks. They need to really hone in on all the tight involvement, and again I think that you can overwhelm their interior with your power and kind of force those guys to not create those gaps, not get space, and force Charbernay into early declarations whether to bang, to bounce, or to bend it back against the formation. I think Miami's well positioned to create those looks.
But they're going to incorporate Noah Fan on chips. But their rap guy is aj Barner, who I was not super familiar with, but he plays a lot of the Julian Hill stuff, so keep an eye on him. So again, down the middle, I think you need Seiler and Campbell to be just dominant, and I think they can be.
You start there.
That would go a long way, and it's nice to have them with ten days of rest compared to four last week. That defensive tackle position's pretty thin after really all the signings this offseason didn't stick. But Jordan Brooks, you know, big, big game for Jordan Brooks and David Long Junior. Same with Javon Holland and take quite frankly, we have to get a lot more from the safety position. It's it's not been great through two games, especially with Jordan Poyer. I think that he's been late on a
lot of stuff. But I think this is the game that best reflects why you go get yourself. With Jordan Brooks, they love to throw routes off of the linebacker range and rotation, so it's imperative for him to have his feel for spacing and to go find those crossing routes, to go find those inbreakers and disrupt it because Gina will put that ball right over your helmet, right past your ear hole, and he will complete it with some velocity and with some confidence in the way he throws it.
So I'm looking for Jordan Brooks to make a play in this game. I think that would be a big, a big push towards getting a W if you can. The second thing here is under pressure. The best way to throw the Seahawks off of their game is create that true dropback situation that we mentioned and then win
your matchups. You know, we spend the show raving about their skill groups and quarterback, and they've had questions and protection up front, and again, if you cannot get them into those obvious passing downs, it won't come into play. But I look at a guy like Jalen Phillips in this game for multiple reasons, who, by the way, had a great Instagram post talking about self doubt and self belief, and I just think the world of this guy, which makes me think that he'll bounce back after a rough
game in game number two. But number one, their normal starter Abe Lucas go Koug's is on pup and his replacement, George Fant, was hurt thirteen snaps into the season and missed last week. Stone Forsyth is up next, and he is gangly. He's six foot eight, three hundred and five pounds. I don't think he has NFL worthy technique and that's
not very much sand in the pants there. So I would expect JP's speed to power move to have an impact this week and his ability to run the arc, condense it back inside and force the quarterback off the top of his drop while staying in the rush count. I think it's a big batch up here for Jalen Phillips and he could have a big day. If you go back to the Patriots game, key On White got pressures off that side the right side almost at will, and they would also condense him inside and he'd win
over the right guard as well. And that's where JP is so special, right, is his ability to win from multiple spots. So I wonder if you can cook up a plan where the right side is kind of sifting through pressure looks versus you know, rushing just your standard two off that side, and you mirror that on the
other side. So if we get a JP win one on one versus the right tackle or right guard on a play where you have a pressure look and a third rusher from that left side from the blind side, that would do wonders to creating splash plays, which is what this defense is going to have to do over the next four, five, six, seven, eight, however long it is. Think about how Trevor Lawrence stepped off the outside pressure into the pocket on in Week one and we got
him down with Ogbah and Phillips Sex. You need that and just for posterity geno against the blitz this year fifty three percent of his drop backs, like they're blitzing the crap out of him, but he's seventy seven percent completion for eight point seven yards per attempt, two touchdowns and a pick.
Really damn good.
So what is the key then, Well, that speaks to the quick answers this system gives him with the horizontal stretch solutions, the fact that they have good early separators. His own processing really benefits this offense. So the old adage create pressure with four right, because the numbers are less when he's not blitzed. It's forty seven percent non blitz rate, and he's still a seventy one percent completion rate, but just five point six yards per attempt without a
touchdown or without any picks. And to be fair, the Patriots ran a delayed blitz that got exposed because they blew a coverage and let Metcalf run a straight line to the end zone unchallenged for a fifty five yard touchdown. So that has its way of inflating your YPA number. But if you're going to blitz, you open yourself up to those busts. Let's go ahead and take our first break rate. There, we have one more key point for
Seattle's offense. We'll do the defense as well. We'll predict the game, all of that much more here on the Draft Time podcast, your host Travis Wingfield, brought to you by AutoNation. We've covered two aspects of the Seahawks offense, the two keys for the Dolphins defense. The third is to help the slot position Jackson Smith and jigb In an offense that Cater's to his skill set, is enjoying the early breakout year that many predicted in his rookie season.
He's played eighty five percent of his snaps in the slot, and he ate against the Patriots with twelve catches for like one p fifteen I think it was, which is kind of a low yards per catch for a player like him, but he was their quick game answer. And I wonder how much mileage you could maybe get out of somebody like Kendall Fuller getting a few reps inside or also providing help in that position. Because the reason I mentioned this is slot has been an absolute problem
through two games. It's been a rough start for number four. So if it's him, I think you have to help vertically but I also hate the matchup because Cater is just not processing well at all right now. He's reacting to the routes and that creates some pretty big windows for the quarterback and early separation where if Christian Kirk makes one of two catches early in the game on that deep corner route, or late in the game in the fourth quarter he had that field speed out that
he didn't make the catch. If they make either of those catches, I think Jacksonville wins that game. And those were both matchups on Cater. I think you have to think about making a switch at some point there. It's been that bad, and if you're not, you have to help inside. So yeah, I like Ramsey to match up on Metcalf. I think that's a good play style for him to go up against. And I think from various structures you can tilt help to the vertical, especially with
Tyler Lockett. But I don't like the idea of Smith and Jigba having slot fades and off of three way goes from that position where he can also you know, get a slot cornerback leaning one way and break it off the other way. For a quick answer, it's just you cannot give you know Smith early solutions in the count because he will pick you apart if you do that, and that's a matchup where he can get those. So I don't want to see four on Smith and Jigba
all alone, not even once. I think the pressure I think with the pressure concept trying to move Gino, the best way to get him to double clutch and help your pass rush get in with four is to cover up that quick answer, and his quick answer usually JSN again, fourteen catches for him, leads the team. Metcalf has thirteen. If we can force the ball elsewhere, you know, sans Tyler Lockett, who vertically can really smoke you if you
let him. But if you can force it to charbonnat Chinault to Bobo to Fant, that's a win for the defense. Not to say those guys you know can't make plays, but Metcalf and Jackson, Smith and jig but those are the ones that I think can really burn you.
And I mentioned it, you know, additional parts on the offense.
Here, Jake Bobo, he's got some River Craycraft to his game where he's just a crafty route runner and a really good blocker.
Keep an eye on him. For crack toss and just a blocker in general. He's a good player.
Let's go ahead and move to the defense here before we take our second break.
The Seahawks scheme.
There are two thoughts my brain keeps going towards here, completely conflicting. Number one is, I can't think of a tougher scheme to get ready for in your first start in over a year, friscalar Thompson. But then also he practiced against it all off season, or at least some version of it. And yes, coach Weave does have his own influences, and the personnel dictates the way you do some things, but by and large, it's a lot of
the same core principles that we run down here. They will walk everybody up, they'll sim pressure, they'll back literally anybody out. I saw a wrap on the Broncos tape where they wheel Jaron Reid and Leo Leonard Williams into the hook and brought Jerome Baker, Tyrel Dodson and Devin Witherspoon. That's two backers and a cornerback by the way, and two defensive tackles playing coverage. And what this did was
it left the protection in a squeeze. Look, you're condensing inside against the two defensive tackles who bail out, So those guys don't have anybody to pick up besides, you know, getting fanning out and getting with and they can't do that because they rushed Derek Hall and Boye Mafey, who's a hell of a player by the way, slanting into
the tackles. That makes them stay in that squeeze position they can't get further with and that creates a free run off either edge for Devon Witherspoon and Jerome Baker, two of their faster players on that defense. Baker is a sumbreill player in this game for me, though, by the way, I'd go after him relentlessly. So Skyler has to be ready to differentiate who is coming and when
and when they show that. He's got to be alert to the fact that this defense is coached to where they all know all those different rush paths and assignments from every single position.
Are you confused? Yet? That's the idea behind getting after the quarterback.
There's a reason this defense has quickly become the Shanahan Tree of modern defensive systems. A quarter of the league now runs some variation of the system, and they also run a variety of tracks. Their games package is extensive. You know, Brian Flores had one of the most extensive
game packages that we've ever seen. He had like fifty five calls that would you know, dictate stunts and twists and loops and all these different types of things you can do to create pressure or to create confusion in the protection plan. And if there's a benefit of playing the Seahawks early, it's that maybe it's not committed to full muscle memory. Just yet another reason I think the Dolphins defense will get better as we go along, as
I think the Seahawks defense will too. From a structural standpoint, they play almost all these in the nickel that's seventy seven percent. They play their four to three thirteen percent, and they're three four seven percent of the time. They do not go into dime more on that in a moment. They go Cover one twenty one percent, Cover three fifteen percent.
That's their primary coverage structures. They have a Cover two package they run fifteen percent, and they run variations of four and six like ten percent, so.
They mix it up.
They do a good job of that, but at its core it's a mix of Cover one and three, which they get to from various pre snap presentations. More on that in the next section. Those various presentations. It starts off with sixty to forty split in favor of two
high safeties. But again I wonder if this changes based upon the quarterback, because against the Patriots, who ran the ball for one hundred and eighty five yards, they played much more tame in terms of they blitzed him five times, and they hung out back in those two deep looks and very rarely brought a hat in the box. But against bo Knicks, they brought that single high safety out they blitzed him sixteen times. I think that's the quarterback
that more compares to Scaler Thompson than Jacoby Brissett. Gosh, what are lineup of quarterbacks to get to start your season? Nicks, Brissett and Thompson. Goodness gracious, how do you attack it?
Well?
I mentioned a couple of things I wanted to come back to, so no dime defense. If we had our full complement of receiver depth I'm talking about. You know, Malik will come back this week, by the way, if we had River Craycraft and Odell Beckham Junior. I would say spread it out and force those rushers into these pointless runs and force their backers to like, oh, we're gonna stay in this pressure look and we're gonna leave the number two receiver to the field uncovered. You maybe
you can still do that. I don't think you have enough guns to do it. If it's a Chan, if it's Molik, if it's Rack Somembarios, maybe you can. But that's one thing to keep an eye on, because they it's a good way to get this this very blitz heav or you know, sim pressure heavy defense off of its on its back foot. Uh, the cover one and cover three aspect, I think it's imperative to get indicators that tip you when the coverage will be cover one,
and that's where you can get your shots. And you have to hit a couple of shots down the field. My keys are going to be to run the ball and hit like two explosives in the passing game. If that happens, I think you have a shot. But if you try those shots and to cover three, that's where you'll get you know, double clutch and some hits in the quarterback and probably some turnovers. Most teams are playing
this heavy Cover two core and Cover six variation. But from this and with a young, inexperienced quarterback, I have to imagine Mike McDonald is willing to dial up a lot of man free with his pressure fronts and daring the Miami receivers to win. With Skyler and the offensive line trying to get the protection sorted out because I don't think it's a strength there either, and find out
where the help is vacating. It's going to be so important to find out information pre snap, and of course running the football off the perimeter is the best way to chill out a sim pressure look. So that's the scheme and how to attack it. My big three here, we'll go ahead and do one. To take our last break is number one, remove the front from the equation.
How do you do that? Well, go watch the Saints tape.
They took the Cowboys front out of that game last week despite being horrendously mismatched with Micah Parsons getting Trevor Penning the literal worst matchup in the National Football League, and they shut him out.
How do you do that? Scheme? Weird?
Right? If you just line up against the Seahawks front and don't incorporate any deception. If you try to go downhill and don't utilize the athletic ability of this line and get them in space, then you a ton of really good players at their strength of playing through pure power and short area burst. This is the game of Byron Murphy, who was a very, very attractive first round pick for Miami. He went off the board before he got there. That was one of my top picks for
the Dolphins in that spot. Leonard Williams and Jaron Reid all exceptional tackles with the ability to play off the end, and Draymont Jones is actually in that mix as well.
How do you do this?
The screen game, the wide run game, which is our base, and the quick game, and I think the best thing that we can do something that we've gotten away from even with Tua in the first two games of the season, which is kind of where I think it's like, hey, go back to what worked is the use of the RPO game to influence the middle of the field and replace those vacated spots with the football. The best way I sailed down a second level that wants to walk
up is to throw into those windows behind them. Because our guys are hitting those at full speed, and you know it's backers getting depth from mugged up spots that's tougher than the guy who runs the slant or the glance or the square in or whatever your route is.
I also wonder if this is not an opportunity. And this is where I'm intrigued by Tyler Huntley's incorporation in the offense, not because I think he's a special player, but because he just adds a wrinkle that I don't think we've seen yet and I kind of wish we
saw in this game. But I think there's an opportunity to take teams by surprise for just a bit and add this wrinkle that takes maybe a couple of weeks to have an adjustment for Like, I could see that working enough to beat Tennessee and New England and maybe you get to three and two going into the bye week.
Still kind of feels like who cares?
But I also think they don't make that change outside outshared of an injury happening, which also makes me feel like I just want to do whatever it takes to get cam Ward fun right. Remember just a week ago when we were talking about all the consistency and the winning seasons and being a team that's going to be in the mix every year, and how these playoff failures don't mean much because they'll be back there again for years to come and they'll eventually break through. That was
the conversation last week. Now here we are we Football's fun. Oh god, I just feel like if we don't see two a back kind of where you're headed.
So cool? Yeah, fun stuff.
To incorporate the quarterback in the run game a little bit more would be something that the one upside of all this. You know, Skyler is not winning any foot races, but he has the scoots to keep it, to keep a zone read around the edge and just put it on tape and get a nice game that forces teams to account for which adds something this run game hasn't had from the quarterback position, which you know, either removes a hat from the equation or puts an extra hat
in there for you as a blocker. So yeah, man, like make Murphy Williams read, make those guys chase Brewer, Jones and Eikenberg, which real quick. By the way, Liam has had his best two games as a Dolphin the last two weeks in case anybody cares about that, or are we just gonna you know, I don't know. Get them out in space, those speedy offensive linemen, get those
defensive tackles in space, get their eyes moving. There was a play last week that I broke down HQ where we had three different types of running schemes that we showed on one play. Really innovative stuff, cool stuff, And that's just by the way I saw the thread. Should the Dolphins remove Mike mcdanil's play caller if you if you can't draw up a front or tell me, like a how a coverage Mary is a front, don't talk about play calls. Okay, just stop, just stop it. I digress,
So do more of that. Do the innovative stuff spring one even. I think eight Chan is a mismatch on any of the Seattle backers. We'll see about Raheem. He practiced and I think he has a chance to play. I love the way he hits the perimeter with physicality because you'll need it against these cornerbacks.
These cornerbacks love to come up.
And hit you running the ball for gains, reducing true dropbacks and gives skylars many stress free reps, non thinking reps out of the equation. There's something I learned from a coaching clinic this summer. Offenses can sometimes view their quarterback like a baseball team views their starting pitcher. It's not necessarily like a gross pitch count, but high leverage pitch count those pitches where there's runners on base, runners in scoring position, that carry a higher heartbeat and can
exhaust stamina more quickly. For a quarterback, stress free reps where they don't have to sort out a million things. It's a a predetermined design thing. Whether it's run game, screen game, quick game, easy decisions in the intermediate game, those can help that quarterback play more confidently. You have to find a way to accomplish that. This week, let's go ahead and take our last break right there. It's
so funny. I said I was gonna make these podcasts shorter because they're just not as much fun to preview a game that you don't feel like you have a great shot in. But here we are thirty minutes at break number two. Let's go ahead and take that break, come back and do things two and three. We'll talk about what's at stake, the range of outcomes predict this game, all of that. Next Draft Time podcast your host Travis Wingfield, brought to you by AutoNation. Are you guys enjoying the
Dolphins sound in and out of breaks? I thought that was a fun way to let you know that the commercial break was coming up. And some reason, the ad the mid rolls get incorporated at wrong spots on different platforms, so you might get the podcast like out of order on those. It's driving me crazy, but I don't do that, so I'll try to figure out how to get that fixed, and I apologize for it. The second thing here is
beat the blitz. We don't know exactly what they're gonna do, but you have to imagine they'll play a pretty aggressive game plan.
I would.
We know that they're aggressive on the perimeter, and they have a belief that they can execute the concepts the concept outside that pairs well with pressure inside, so I'm inclined to believe we do see some heat on Skyler. If they do that, we're gonna need to win some well timed calls to offset that. We're gonna have to beat those presses. We're gonna have to make them miss
on the outside. I keep thinking about the twenty twenty two game at Buffalo when Tyreek made Trey White wiff and Tua put the ball right on the numbers for a long touchdown. I think if you need to hit one of those, you know and Witherspoon Andreek Wolan are so aggressive, probably the most aggressive cornerback tannem in the NFL, and Wolan has the closing speed that he doesn't mind
taking that chance. So between the screen and outside run game and my absolute refusal to just punt on involving Tyreek and Wallall because you're down your starting quarterback, my biggest key is to id those single high safety looks and connect on a vertical shot. If you can do that early, maybe it changes the game plan and their
aggressiveness and gets them out of their game. I actually think we have good matchups anywhere outside of Weatherspoon, who I already think is a top ten cornerback in this league and also plays a quasi linebacker role. But I think that Reek Wollan's too aggressive for edgeln Waddle. I think that Trey brown Is doesn't have the long speed to keep up with either of those guys. So if they blitz, and I think they will, we're gonna have
to make them pay. Get some double moves and some you know slot phase to wattle and reek and take some shots against you know, no help or maybe single high safety. Looks tough task, but I think you can do it. Number three, attack the intermediate perimeter. Talk about specificity here so on most shows, no matter who the opponent is, I state the importance of running football wide because it sets up everything for this offense to do what it does best. Horizontal and vertical stretch accounted for
by overplay. One area I think the Dolphins have struggled to get the ball into the first two games is outside the numbers in that intermediate area. Against a you know, one to three defensive structure Cover one, Cover three, that's
typically where the vulnerabilities are. Whether it's an out against outside leverage we saw with Waddle against the Jacksonville Jaguars for that completion, although that was two man coverage or a deep crosser that he and Riek both hit against Jacksonville on another two variation, I think that was just cover two or a flag or a comeback. Those Cover one and cover three looks can take on three elements.
Number one is man, which is a great way to throw comebacks against a cornerback that has his back to the quarterback and is usually done through that cover one look like, okay, there's no help, We're gonna threaten vertical and come back because he has to account for the vertical shot. Next, if they cloud it and play that perimeter cornerback off a little bit, you throw quick hitches,
speed outs underneath and try to force a mistackle. And then finally, if they play trail or the curl flat zone, which is like a off coverage in that same look, that's where you can get your deep outs and your flags. This serves to stress that single high safety. It makes their Cover three shell irrelevant, and it gets the linebacker spaced out more so that could be a big element to pulling off the upset. Some additional parts on that defense. Julian Love is an awesome safety who helped them in
their disguise. I don't think that Mike McDonald has is Kyle Hamilton, but he's the closest thing to it. And then ray Sean Jenkins is a decent player who was with the Jags a couple of years ago now at the Seahawks. I also mentioned Draymont Jones and Trey Brown. Those are two guys that are good players. But I think those guys you can match up well with based upon how you call it. I think the Seattle team is actually pretty slept on, even though they are too and zero.
What's at stake here?
I mean it's NFC game Week three, TUSBA on the road, backup quarterbacks, so not much really, but avoiding a losing record, which will be the first time in the McDaniel era they'd be on the losing side of things with the record, and then going into that Monday night football game at two and one, I think would spark a lot of confidence at least for a week and turn the mood around a little bit of the fan base. So really,
it's your record and material things, that's about it. My keys to victory Number one, create that conflict on Seattle linebackers. Go after Terrell Bernard and Jerome Baker. Number two. Disrupt the timing of the Seattle offense. Find ways to mix your pressure looks with blitzes and four man rushes and just jam on the outside. Create confusion for the receiver
in the quarterback and disrupt the timing. And number three, pair of those blitzers with four man rush wins just be just have a change up to your fastball and time it up. Well, you're gonna have to do that to win this game. My range of outcomes and predictions, I think there's an outside chance they effectively mess with Seattle's operation offensively, create some short drives, maybe get a takeaway or two, and get short fields off of that
and find points that way. I think there's the possibility of popping the big play in the run game the way they did early against Baltimore last year. But I just think the quarterback disparity is too much here. We're coming into a stretch of games where our own quarterback disparity was going to be like double digit favorite situations Levis and b and Brisket against Tua. Like that's a massive downgrade for the opposition, Like, you know, we saw
that last year and then we blew teams out. But Gino's really good, and he has good weapons, and they have great play designers on either side of the football. I just don't think we have the trigger man to keep up. I could see Miami stealing a seventeen thirteen win, maybe even twenty seventeen, but I think the more likely scenario is a come after bull Seattle win could be as much as twenty seven thirteen, but I'm gonna land in the middle and protict twenty two thirteen Seahawks are
your winners. That's it for my time here. Tomorrow, the great Kevin Harlan joins me. We'll also have Kyle Krabs. I'm gonna get out of here. You all please be sure to subscribe to the podcast. Leave us a ready, leave us a review, Follow me on social at Wakeful NFL, and the dolphins at Miami Dolphins. Check out my guys Seth and Juice on the fish Tank podcast and the YouTube channel for a brand new version of Dolphins HQ.
I also have a devon eight chan breakdown that you don't want to miss up there, and last, butt not least Miami Dolphins dot com Until next time, fins up, Calin and Cameron Daddy coming Home.