Field Gulls
Not every comfortable win looks clean on the tape and the Seattle Seahawks’ game against the Carolina Panthers is a good example of that. The tape shows a Seahawks team that won through structure, discipline, and concept execution more than overwhelming talent. The margins were controlled, mistakes were limited, and the plan — while conservative at times — worked exactly as intended.
Seattle’s run defense looks far better on tape than it has at various points earlier in the season, and the improvement starts with gap discipline. The Seahawks consistently played single-gap principles, rotating between even fronts and five-man spacing to prevent Carolina from generating downhill momentum preventing any run from advancing more than 11 yards.
On inside zone looks, the defensive tackles did a solid job of anchoring first and peeking second. Rather than shooting gaps recklessly, they absorbed double teams long enough for linebackers to stay clean and scrape to the ball.
Carolina runs inside zone. Seattle aligns in an even front with disciplined edge leverage. The play-side DT absorbs the double team instead of splitting it, forcing Chuba Hubbard to declare early. The linebacker stays patient, fills the correct gap, limits the run to a short gain and turns this in a turnover due to D-Law’s effort to make the play. This is run defense winning with technique and timing, not penetration.
Seattle leaned heavily on Cover 3 match principles, mixing in quarters on longer down situations. The objective was clear: remove the first read, keep everything in front, and force late throws and checkdowns. Safeties played with controlled depth and patience, particularly against play action, trusting their keys instead of triggering downhill prematurely.
The defense shows a two-high shell pre-snap, rotating late into Cover 3 match. The strong safety drops into hook/curl as the free safety closes the post. The quarterback hesitates just long enough for the rush to matter.
Offensively, Seattle leaned into spacing concepts, layered route combinations, and defined reads rather than chasing explosive plays. Levels, shallow crossers, and flood concepts repeatedly stressed Carolina’s linebackers, especially when paired with play action. The tape reveals a clear effort to stress the defense horizontally and mentally through formation, motion, and route distribution.
The Seahawks call play action with a wide zone pass to one side of the field (it has the slight motion of the fullback) and this forces the defense to aggressively defend the running game, attacking the left side of the offense and leaving two of the three routes of the Flood concept open. Darnold connects with Barner, who benefits from a good block by Kupp to score the touchdown.
***Flood is an offensive passing play designed to overwhelm one side of the field with three receivers running routes to different depths (short, intermediate, deep), forcing zone defenders to choose who to cover and leaving one area open...
