FIRST LOOK: Seahawks vs Patriots

0:00Good morning everybody, welcome to another episode of Hawkblogger Mornings. I'm Brian Nemhouser and man, I am so excited for today because guess what? It is the first day that I'm going to get to spend some time with all of you talking about really previewing a Seahawks game for the 2026 season. I could wait, usually I do these the Wednesdays before the game, but it's going to be a Wednesday game. And there's no game is going to be played ahead of time so I don't need to wait for any numbers to come in. I don't need to wait for any data. I've got all the data and we might as well start talking about it, right? I mean, we've done all the talking about all the things on this show for the whole off season and now we get to actually start previewing a real game again. I cannot wait. This episode is brought to you by PrizePix and by Pemco Insurance who's been serving

1:03Northwest homes for over 75 years. I'm a Pemco customer and really excited to be working with them more on that in a little bit. So I'm going to get into it. This is not the last of the previews for this game, but it is the first of them. And so we're going to get into reviewing what happened last year. I think a lot of people probably have maybe an incomplete picture of what went on in that game. And I think it's important for us to revisit. We're going to go over the Patriots team and re familiarize ourselves with who they were and what their strengths were. And then also some of the changes that they made over this off season. I'm going to actually have a great guest on Sunday, Sunday afternoon, Doug Coyed of the Boston Harold, I think. I've had Doug on a few times. I should know this by now.

2:04Doug is, yes, of the Boston Harold. I do have that right. So we'll have him on Sunday afternoon. And just in case you were curious, the way things are going to be going for the Seahawks schedule because this messes up everybody's schedule is that they actually are going to have some player availability today, a little walk through. I'll be going to that a little bit later this afternoon. And then nothing tomorrow. Then Saturday is essentially what would that be? Saturday's like a Monday. I think Saturday's a Monday. Yeah, Saturday's a Monday by normal schedule. So there'll be Mike McDonald press conference. There'll be players available on the podium and there'll be a locker room. And then they'll have practice that we'll start getting information about who's practicing. We won't get practice reports yet. We'll get our first practice report. Yes. Wednesday, I think is when we get first injury reports, right?

3:07So Sunday, this Sunday will actually be like a typical Tuesday. So Sam Donald will have his press conference. We'll have certain players. Then the coordinator. So Brian Flurry and Adderty will be available on Sunday. Talk to them. And then Monday will be like a Thursday. Is that right? I get that right. Kind of. And then you've got actually Monday's going to be like a Friday, essentially. Monday's going to be like a Friday. We'll get our final report from Mike McDonald. And we'll get, I think, the final injury reports or participation reports and projections for the game. Yeah, that's two days ahead. That makes sense. And then Wednesday's the game. So it's a really weird week. And you're going to do things as best we can to adjust and accommodate.

4:09But I will tell you, it messed up my schedule. I didn't really figure all this out. We had real Hawk Talk scheduled next Wednesday during the game, which obviously wasn't going to work. So everyone's going to kind of be adjusting to what is an odd schedule. And then the Seahawks will get the bonus of a very long, kind of a mini-bye, the week after their first game, because they will get the most rest of any team other than the Patriots for week two. So oh, so excited. Let's go. So so many places to start. So many places to start. I'm going to start with just familiarizing ourselves with who this Patriots team was last year. Let me pull up. I did work this off season, as you guys know, on kind of getting to know different teams

5:11in a more uniform way. I will still be doing my tail of the tape. That'll probably come out Sunday, I would guess. But I also spent time on building out this app. If you go to stats.hawkblogger.com, that kind of pulls all this information about teams. I will share my screen and show you what I am looking at. And put this up on stage. And this is the Seahawks version of that page. You don't need to spend a bunch of time on the Seahawks version, although it is fun to look at. And I will remind you that there's a little Easter egg on here that if you click on the Super Bowl Champion badge, you get some confetti. And also if you do that, and then you go to the 49ers page, you get John Lynch screaming.

6:13If you go to the Rams page, you get Sean McVeigh screaming into his play sheet. Just as a little Easter egg, if you will, that's kind of things. But Patriots, Patriots, Patriots. This is the Patriots from 2000 and 25. I will just say at the outset, I really feel like people have forgotten the Patriots from last year. And I think they have dismissed the Patriots from last year. And I am not in that camp. This was a Super Bowl team last year that had the MVP runner up at quarterback. I don't think that's a team that you just ignore and assume is an easy win. And I honestly, a lot of people are just assuming this is a simple one. Let me tell you some of the things that stand out to me about the Patriots from 2025.

7:16So this is a look at EPA per play on offense versus defense across the season. And what you kind of see here is the blue is the offensive EPA and how it trended over the year. And then the red is the defense of EPA. Keep in mind, lower is better for the red when it goes up. That means that the defense did not do well. And then this is the playoffs over here on the far right. So you can see regular season and then the playoffs. And this was the number one EPA per play offense in the NFL last season. So I mean, it was a very, very explosive offense and you'll see again why that was. But number one, it wasn't the Rams. It wasn't, you know, the bills, it wasn't, you know, pick your other.

8:18This was the number one offensive team by EPA in the NFL last season. And defensively, they were number 11 in the EPA allowed. So that wasn't too shabby either. And from what you'll see in the middle here is net EPA margin. They were second in the NFL. So by one measure here, like that, like they ended up finishing second in the NFL last year. By the way, the CX were not first in EPA margin, but they were pretty efficient team last year. But let's keep digging. We're going to get into a lot of detail here. So buckle up. This is a look at success rate. We're not going to look at every single one of these, but maybe we will, who knows. They were number three in success rates on offense. They were number 18 in success rate allowed on defense. Now success rate for people that don't remember can be calculated different ways. Sometimes it is the classic fashion. Is do you get 40% of the yards needed on first down, 60% of the yards needed on second

9:23down and 100% of the yards needed on third or fourth down. There's also a newer way to calculate it, which is positive EPA plays is a successful play. So they were the number three success rate on offense, number 18. What generally checks is how on schedule are you? How do you get the necessary yards on first, second, and third down to stay on schedule? And so you can see here, at least defensively, they're not as good in that regard. So they were a little bit of the EPA per play allowed being higher, probably mean some turnover, stuff that went their direction, but we'll kind of dig in a little bit more to see what we find. But the success rate on offense is pretty high. So they're just good on offense last year. Yards per play, number one in the NFL last year on offense, 6.4 yards per play. Yards per play allowed number 12, 5.2. So again, not the strongest defense, but the offense was formidable.

10:29And interestingly, I'm looking at it. Is that right? I have some questions about that. I'm going to bring up the Super Bowl box score, because this has a number that I don't believe. Yards per play. Yeah, it's a 4.9. I don't know about that. There's something fishy about something on that one. Explosive play rate. This was the number two most explosive offense in the NFL with a 12.1% explosive play rate. The league average was 9.6. Explosive play rate allowed on defense, number 10. So they were very good at creating explosives and pretty good at minimizing explosives. Turnover rate. So this is another one that's important. Turnover rate, they were 12th on offense.

11:31This is a place where they did fall back a little bit. And then turnover rate forced on defense, they were 15th. So they did not create a lot of turnovers. Now we get into the rushing game and again, we're going to break down looking at EPA, Rush EPA per play first. This was the 14th best rushing team by EPA per play 15th best passing, sorry, 15th best Rush EPA defense. So the interesting thing there is knowing how good they were on offense overall when you're clocking in at 14th in Rush EPA and 23rd in Rush success rate, it's pretty clear this was a team that did not run the football very efficiently and also was really efficient through the air. Like really, they made their money passing the football last year.

12:33And we'll get kind of back into why that became an issue for them, but they were a little bit of a one trick pony on offense. If they're passing game, which pretty much every week was humming, they were formidable. But if it wasn't, that run game was not good enough to make up for it. So that's a something to be aware of with that Patriots team. And again, this is last year's team. We're going to talk about what changed about this year's team. And again, similarly running defense 15th and Rush EPA allowed 21st and Rush success rate allowed. And who was the Super Bowl MVP last year? A running back. So yeah, it does matter that they struggled a little bit in their run defense. And we'll see if they did anything to kind of shore that up this season. All right. And then we get to explosive Rush rates. They were 14th explosive rush rate allowed.

13:35They were 8th. Miss tackles forced on a per rushing attempt. 27th. So this was a very like they were a rumbling running team, but they were not a running team that was going to run around you. It was not a fast team on the ground. And I think that showed up as well. So that's kind of the quick peak at the run game. If we get to the past game, past game, not a shock. Number one drop back EPA in the NFL. Number 11 in drop back EPA allowed on defense. So a pretty good past defense. We saw that show up in the Super Bowl as well. Drop back success rate. Number one. Explosive pass rate. Number one. Passer rating. Number two. QB grade when under pressure. Number six. QB grade in a clean bot pocket.

14:37Number three. But where things get interesting with them is sack rate allowed. 24th. And that certainly showed up in a Super Bowl where the Seahawks had six sacks. And Drake May got sacked just a ton last season, but his playoff run in particular, he was sacked six times by the Seahawks, five times by the Broncos, five times by the Texans, and five times by the Chargers. That's crazy. To be sacked 21 times in four games as a lot. And this was an issue for him all season long. Drake May is overall sack numbers 47 sacks last year.

15:38So this is a guy that's, people talk about Sam Donald and how he handles pressure. Drake May, like he, he actually from in terms of, you know, how he passed in those situations did okay, but he just took a lot of sacks, took a lot of sacks, negative plays, and that's when things start to go down, downward for that team. Now it's also worse noting that the Patriots defense was 21st in passer rating allowed. And it's 14th in dropback success rate allowed. There were some plays to be made in that Super Bowl last year. We know that, Sam Donald knows that. It is worth knowing that they had the number one coverage grade of any team in the NFL last year via PFF, which probably going to be moving away from some of that until I get a little bit more clarity about how they're going to be doing their grading. But this is just what we had from last year where they were doing their normal grading

16:38process. This was not a team that sacked the opponent, posing quarterback very much 20th in the NFL in sack rate generated and 15th in pass rush win rate. So that's another one, like not the best pass rush team. So if you're looking at this kind of at the bigger level, excellent passing team, not such a great rushing team, not an explosive rushing team at all, very explosive passing team. Weakness on in the past game because they're so good at it. The weakness there was largely Drake may taking sacks like that was that was a big one for him. And also on defense, okay, like an okay defense overall, not the best of generating pressure on the opposing quarterbacks.

17:40So that was the things that kind of that kind of jump out to me in reviewing this stuff. By the way, like I'm reviewing this with all of you. I've not done pre show analysis. I like to do it live, give you my live reactions, my interpretations, we talk about it as we go. I see we've already got a super chat here. This is from Patrick is different gave us some jewels, a football. Thank you. I think I missed some super chats last night at the very end of our Ceeox prediction show. On real hawk talk, I always apologize for that. I do my best, but there's a lot of things, a lot of moving parts and sometimes I do miss some of the super chats or something along the way. So appreciate your patience as we kind of get back in the swing of all this stuff. So that is a high level there, but we're going to get into a little bit more detail. So one of the other things I have in this view is, or in this site, which again, stats.hawkblogger.com.

18:44You can play around with this yourself. I've got, let's look at personnel. I want to look at personnel groupings because I think this is a really important thing that I want to have a little bit more eyes on for all of you this year. And thanks to FTN Fantasy and Sumer Sports, I have personnel data that I just haven't had before and it's going to be really useful across the season. So 11 personnel on offense. And forgive me if this is repeat for people that already know all this, but it's not something that everybody knows. So I'll probably always kind of explain it the first time I mention it. 11 personnel, the way you do personnel groupings. The first number is the amount of running backs or the amount of backs in the personnel group. The second number is the amount of tight ends. And then you take that number, let's say in this case, 11 personnel, one running back, one tight end, you can have five eligible receivers on any play.

19:48So 1 plus 1 equals 2, that means you have three wide receivers in that grouping. 11 personnel, one running back, one tight end, three receivers. So then when you get to 12 personnel, let's do it together. One running back, two tight ends, one plus two equals three. That means five minus three, there's only two eligible receivers. Similarly, 21 personnel, two backs, that means usually a full back and a running back, one tight end. So that's up to three, two receivers, 22 personnel, two running backs, two tight ends, one receiver. So on and so forth. So you kind of get how that works. Well, for the Patriots, they were the number one EPA per play, 11 personnel team in the NFL, number one in EPA per pass when they had three receivers out there. Their pass rate was 66%, which is actually below average. So they were a team that when they did 11 personnel, they were pretty likely to run the

20:52ball relative to other teams. Their EPA per rush in 11 personnel was awful, awful, 26th in the NFL. So this was something that worked well as a passing offense for them, but not well as a rushing offense. 12 personnel, they were fourth in EPA per play. Again, this is two tight ends, two receivers, fourth in EPA per pass, 28th in EPA per rush. They were not better. I mean, they were worse in running the ball when they had two tight ends, but they were more unpredictable, 52% pass rate. So I always, when I'm evaluating teams and I'm looking at personnel groupings, I'm looking at what are the ones where they actually are good at something in it. In this case, the pass. And then are they good at two things? That's the best. If you can be good at running and passing, ideal, obviously. But then the third thing is what's your pass run split?

21:56Because the most ideal situation for an NFL team is to be a 50-50 split team that is good at running and passing. Let me switch over to the Seahawks for a second to show you what that looks like. So if we look at the Seahawks and I go to personnel, what you're going to see here in 12 personnel for the Seahawks last year, number two in EPA per play, number one in EPA per pass, number six in EPA per rush. And they passed the ball, well, pass the ball 45% of the time. So they ran 55% but it's pretty close to 50-50 and through most of the season, it was a 50-50 split. So they were good running. They were good passing and it was unpredictable. That's why the 12 personnel group for the Seahawks last year was a game-changing group. If you go to the Rams, which I know everybody doesn't want to do, but let's take a look at the Rams. Their money personnel grouping was 13 personnel.

22:56Number three in EPA per play, number five in EPA per pass, number three in EPA per rush. And they only passed it 39% of the time. So they were pretty unlikely to pass. But when they did, they were very effective. 49ers, just last one I'll show you here. They were a dynamic 21 personnel team. So they were eighth in EPA per play, eighth in EPA per pass, 13th in EPA per rush, and 48 to 52 split in pass versus run. So again, there's just teams that I look at to find what's their money personnel package for the Patriots. I would say 12 personnel is pretty good for them, but 21 with a fullback is also a little interesting. It's not better. Like it's a lower EPA per play out of that grouping than they are out of their other two groupings. But they're more similar in passing and rushing and the split there is 41% past 60%

24:04rush. So they were the best rushing team of any of their personnel groupings when they had a fullback on the field. And that's, to me, notable because it makes them a little bit more dangerous that you could be dealing with play action or something like that when they've got a fullback on the field. So defensively in those situations, where did they, when they faced these different groupings, how did they do? One that they really struggled with interestingly was 21 personnel. When there was a fullback on the field, they were 28th in defensive EPA per play, 26th in defensive EPA per pass, and 13th in EPA per rush. So it will be interesting if the COX decide to feature a fullback, who right now, the only fullback they've got technically on the roster is Brady Russell. We are going to find out if the team decides to use Nick Calorup or Eric Sobert or anyone

25:06else in the back field as a fullback. I'm very curious about that. They were pretty good at defending three receiver sets. 11 personnel, they had the ninth best EPA per play, the fifth best EPA per pass. Now they did struggle to defend the run when teams went to three receivers, 29th in the NFL and EPA per rush. So when the COX have three receivers on the field, that is something to really pay attention to, because in fact, I'm kind of curious if I can get, I'm going to see if I can pull that data while we're doing the show. And see if I can figure that one out. I wonder if I can go back. Well, I'm going to see if I can pull this and we'll go along the way. I know people get annoyed when I do this stuff and they just want me to keep talking. But I'll pull it in a little bit. I'll do that. Let's do this. I'm going to show you some other things about situational splits.

26:08I'm going to get into what changed about these teams or especially about the Patriots in a second. Before we do that, I want to, first of all, just thank all of you for tuning in. I know there's a lot going on. There's a lot of places you can be and I'm really, really appreciative of you being here. And also very appreciative for our sponsors. Let's hear from our sponsors right now. It feels like every day I get a new message that some company has had a data breach and my personal information has been exposed. And if it's not that, I get a new fishing email that's more and more sophisticated, trying to get me to expose my own information to some sort of scam. And it's to the point where if you're not doing something to protect your identity online, you're in real danger. And that's where a product like CoverOn comes in. CoverOn's a new product brought to you by the makers of NordVPN, NordSecurity.

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29:14play $5 and win in bonus lineups. So check it out at prize picks and make sure you can do that responsibly. Okay. Thank you. Thanks to our sponsors. Thanks to all of you for supporting our sponsors. Really, really do appreciate it. Okay. I'm going to see about pulling that data. And while that is churning away, we're going to look at some other things related to this Patriots team. So let me pull up. I'm going to pull up a matchup tool that I have on this that you guys find out together if we think this is interesting. So on this same stats dot Hawklogger.com, you can pick a team to match up against and click analyze matchup and it will look at when one team is on offense, how it goes like against that defense. And similarly, when the other teams on offense, and then it'll tell you which team has the edge.

30:16So this is again, 2025 data. This is regular season data. And you see that where the sea ox have a big advantage here is in the running game when the Patriots try to run the ball. And that played out last year. The Patriots, I mean, they ended up with 79 yards rushing, but they struggled to move the ball on the ground. And if you look at the other place that the sea ox have an advantage when the Patriots had the ball, it was sacrate and pressure rate and sure enough, Drake May was sacked nine times. I want to pull up how many pressures the sea ox had in that game last year. Let's look at the Super Bowl. Let's look at the sea ox defense. Sea ox had 30 pressures, 30 pressures in that game last year. That might have been a season high.

31:17I don't know. That was up there in terms of the amount of pressures. I don't want to guess who was the pressure leader for the sea ox in that Super Bowl, pressure leader, not sack leader, pressure leader in that game. Let's see what guess is we've got coming in here. Someone says Leonard Williams. We've got a guess of that. All we got is Leonard Williams so far. So maybe you guys are a little bit behind me. But I'll tell you the answer. Here in the right vicinity, it was a defensive lineman. It was a defensive tackle. I see a Derek Hall guess by Joey Walker, Devin Witherspoon is a good guess. But the person who got it right first, Christian Fuerrecht day, Byron Murphy, Byron Murphy had five pressures in that game and two sacks. Derek Hall was right behind him as was Uchene and Wosu and DeMarcus Lawrence. Both all three of those guys had four pressures each.

32:19Derek Hall had two sacks, one in each half. And then Devin Witherspoon had three pressures. Boy, a Maffe had three pressures. Leonard Williams had three pressures, Riley Mills. Don't forget. Had that crazy sack, two pressures and a sack. Nicki Minaj had a pressure as did Jiren Reed. So when I talk about looking at these matchups, can you get over your skis on data and you got to watch the film as well, sure. But the data is like this nice little map and it highlights these certain things that you want to dig in on to see what's there. And so when we look at the changes that the Patriots made, we're going to see, okay, did that change potentially any of these advantages that the Seahawks had? And then personnel grouping. There was an advantage for the Patriots when they were in 11 personnel last year versus what the Seahawks were like. This isn't in the game of the Super Bowl, but this is over the course of the season.

33:21But the Seahawks had advantages in 21 personnel and other places. Offensively, when the Seahawks had the ball, they had an edge in yards per play. But this is an interesting one. It looks like the Patriots have the edge in run defense. And that would be true. But if you started looking at, I'm going to jump around here. We'll come back to this matchup. But let me pull open the Seahawks. And one of the other things you can do on this team evaluator, stats.hawkblogger.com, is you can filter by points in the season. So if you go for the last four games of the season and you look at the Seahawks running attack, all of a sudden, it's like much, much better. Right? And if you, let's go to the full season and we'll just look at Rush EPA per play, look at what happens to the Seahawks rushing game over the last part of the season.

34:29It just took off from basically week 16 on. So again, it depends on when you're playing a team, how they're playing, all that kind of stuff. So let's get back real quick to looking at the matchup set here. We'll get the Seahawks back on this. Load the splits in there as well. Okay. So when we look at the Seahawks having the ball in offense again, we talked about success rate, yards per play was in favor of the Seahawks passing, passer rating, sack rate. That was an advantage. And the Seahawks, by the way, only were sacked one time. Jamdon will sack one time in that game against the Patriots. What else? Seahawks didn't look like they had an advantage in 11 personnel based on how the Patriots defense played against that.

35:34They did have an advantage in 12 and 21 personnel. And all right, I've got the data back, I've got the data back from my little tool here that was churning away. How did the Seahawks do specifically in personnel groupings against the Patriots in the Super Bowl? And how often do they use it? Well, they used 11 personnel, 35 plays. Their EPA was negative 0.091, which is not good. But their EPA per rush, they rushed it six times versus 29 passes in those six rushes out of 11 personnel plus 0.228 rush per EPA per rush. That is insane. That is insane. To give you an idea, the number one rush EPA team in the NFL last year was 0.052.

36:36That was the best in the NFL last year. The Seahawks against the Patriots in the Super Bowl, 0.228 when going against the Patriots when the Seahawks were in 11 personnel when the Patriots were matched up against it. So this again, keep in mind the Patriots, sorry, I got to switch back in this view. I've got so many tabs open. Patriots were 29th in the NFL in EPA per rush when defending three wide receiver sets last year. I didn't know that until we did this show. I do now. And the Seahawks exploited the heck out of that last year. Now, they only had six rushing plays. It makes me wonder if I'm Mike McDonald, if I'm Brian Flurry, am I looking to run more out of 11 personnel? And keep in mind, the Seahawks became a much better 11 personnel team once Rashid Shaheed was traded for.

37:38They were one of the worst 11 personnel rushing teams before that trade. They were one of the best 11 personnel rushing teams after that trade. So is three receiver sets going to be a bigger part of the game plan for the Seahawks from a running perspective? Because the past plays they did at 11, not good, negative EPA in there for the Seahawks, when they were in 12 personnel, this was their bread and butter to tight ends. They were a little bit better overall. They passed better here. So they only had seven past plays out of the 25 plays that they did in 12 personnel, but they had a 0.264 EPA per pass in those seven plays out of 12 personnel. How good is 0.264 EPA per pass? The number one EPA per passing team in the NFL last year was plus 0.155. So it is massively above the best passing offense in the NFL,

38:42what the Seahawks did in 12 personnel against the Patriots last year. So run out of 11, pass out of 12 was a big part of what did work for the Seahawks in that game. Interestingly, the Seahawks ran eight plays out of 13 personnel. And six of those were running plays that did not work. Two of them were passing plays that worked really well, plus 0.181 again, plus 1.555 was the best passing offense in the NFL last year. The Seahawks were 0.181 in 13 personnel. So when they went heavy, they were able to really exploit the Patriots from a passing perspective. And let me see if I've got that game open somewhere. I know I do because I was just looking at it. I want to look at the Patriots. We're going to look at, they've got a nice little cool thing about coverage matchups that you can do.

39:46And so players that were exploited, players that were exploited. So Marcus Jones was a slot corner, gave up seven catches and seven targets for 72 yards. Wasn't like terrible, but certainly didn't do anything to stop the game. Carlton Davis, three catches and six targets. But who? They were able to target Robert Spalane, who I think was dealing with an injury going into this game as well. But not a lot. Christian Gonzalez was awesome in that game. Really, really good. This game would have been so much bigger of a blowout if he hadn't been there. And we're going to see what happens with him in this game. Who gave up the touchdown? Jack Gibbons, linebacker, gave up the touchdown. So what it looks like here just kind of going through the matchups

40:53is that... T-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t, all right. So, I mean, Cooper Cop did some good work in this game against, especially against Marcus Jones. And then A.J. Barner, because he obviously had the touchdown. Four catches and four targets for A.J. Barner in that game. They got him matched up against Marcus Jones, who's two catches, two targets. Robert Spalane, one catch and one target. Jack Gibbons, one catch, one target. And Jack Gibbons was one that gave up the touchdown. So I'm guessing that one of those plays was where they were in 13 personnel. Certainly, 12 personnel. But that's kind of a one takeaway that I have from looking at... looking at those numbers. So that's an interesting one. It's an interesting one. Let's take a look. Well, yeah, let's take a look at what changed for the Seahawks, okay?

41:56So... Oh, sorry, for the Patriots. So let me see if I've got this up there somewhere, which... This was the... offseason tracker? Yeah. I've built way too many tools over the course of the season. This is not complete. But let me share this with all of you. It's a set there? Yeah. So I'll make this a little bit bigger. All right. So... This uses my value over replacement metrics. So you can kind of like squint at it. I wouldn't pay too much attention to that. But let's look at the additions. They add Kevin Byard at safety. They add Romeo Dobbs at wide receiver. They add KJ Brit at linebacker, Dremont Jones, familiar face

42:56into their defensive line. Kindle Vildor at cornerback, Julian Hill at tight end. James Hudson at right tackle, Elijah Vera Tucker at guard. That one's an important one to keep an eye on. Mike Brown at safety, Reggie Gilliam at fullback. So they went... Remember we talked about that they were pretty good when they had a fullback on the field. Last year I believe they had Jack Westover from the Huskies as they're kind of filling fullback. Reggie Gilliam is much more of a prototypical fullback. Be curious to see how that changes things for them in the run game. But they lost. Stefan Diggs, Marty Maipu, who was a linebacker, Jalen Hawkins, the safety who played really well from them last year. Kyrie's Tonga, who was a good interior defensive lineman from a run defense perspective. Austin Hooper, the tight end, was a part of their passing game. Garrett Bradbury, the center. We're going to talk about how they've remade their offensive line. Jack Gibbons is no longer on the team. That's the guy that gave up to touchdown to AJ Barner,

43:57Viderian Low, left tackle, gone, Kivon Chason, who was a big part of their pass rush, gone. Jaleni Tavai, linebacker, gone, and for the Jennings edge player, gone. There's a lot of other guys that are gone, but I don't know that there are enough snaps to worry about. And then they drafted Caleb Lomu with their first pick. He's a tackle. Gabe Ackis, who's an edge rusher, and I think has had some questions from a health perspective. Eli Raridan, the tight end, Karen Prunti, the cornerback, Demetrius Crownover, who's also a very, very big tackle. I'm guessing they're going to look at him as a guard. Namdi Obazar, linebacker, Bayran Morton, at QB, Jam Miller, running back, and Quinn Tavius Hutchins at Edge. So that's what they did that kind of changed. And it doesn't say AJ Brown on here. AJ Brown was traded for. I think that happened after I did all that. Obviously that's a huge addition to that team as well.

45:01And there's probably some other additions that are not captured here, but this is at least a decent overview. And so when I kind of look at the first thing that I want to dig in on a little bit more is offensive line. Because offensive line was a huge, like they basically could not operate on offense because of how the C-OX were able to just overwhelm them. And you had Jared Wilson was the guy who was getting pushed around on left guard by Riley Mills. And then you had Will Campbell getting absolutely whooped by pretty much everybody at left tackle. Well, those guys aren't playing those positions anymore. Jared Wilson is going to be moved to center. And Will Campbell, well, let's see, where the latest depth chart is.

46:05I'm going to look at the Patriots. I believe Will Campbell does look like he's just going to still play left tackle based on this. So that's still a pretty big advantage. Elijah Vera Tucker is now the left guard. And Elijah Vera Tucker has been a good player when healthy. Jared Wilson was a center in college. He's moving back to center. I think that's a better spot for him. Mike and Wayne, and Wayne knew right guard and Morgan Moses right tackle. Those guys were the right guards and right tackles last year. And Wayne knew gave up four pressures in the game against the C-OX. Morgan Moses gave up three pressures. So it wasn't like they were perfect. But relative to like Will Campbell, who gave up eight pressures in that game

47:05and Garrett Bradbury, the center who gave up six pressures in that game, not as bad. So I do think that, you know, the fact that they've remade their offensive line, gives them some reason to be more hopeful. I think Jared Wilson at center over Garrett Bradbury is an improvement. And then I think Elijah Vera Tucker over Jared Wilson at guard, left guard is an improvement. But Will Campbell still will Campbell. And his arms did not get longer over the off season. And this could be a real hit to his mentors to use a March on Lynchism. If he goes out there and gets dominated again, gives up eight pressures to where they just couldn't operate. And so this could be like, I'm telling you, if I'm the C-OX, I'm lining up by Ramurfi over him. I'm lining up Leonard Williams over him.

48:07I'm lining up Marcus Lawrence. I am like making him the town bike. Like everybody gets a ride going against Will Campbell on the left side of their line. And we'll see. We'll see if they can hold up. I don't think that that offensive line is so significantly better that you should expect a completely different outcome, but it is better. Like I think it should be better. It should be more reliable than what they had in the Super Bowl last year. So I think that's a material change. We'll see how much that affects the game. And Drake May, I don't know that he is appreciably different as a quarterback in terms of pressure to sack ratio in terms of handling that. And one of the things that is worth kind of tracking with Drake May is he really struggled in the playoffs last year. Now there's a question about him being hurt, but the reality is, I mean, he had at least

49:15one interception in three out of the four games in the playoffs. He threw four, I mean, he had that thrown him for 295 yards against the Seahawks, but we all know that came in the like the fourth quarter, like end of this game pretty much when the game was out of reach. So his other games, he threw for 86 yards against the Broncos, he threw for 179 yards against the Texans. He just was not very good. The other thing to keep in mind with Drake May is he is a mobile guy. He had 10 carries for 66 yards against the chargers. He had 10 carries, 10 carries is a lot of carries for a quarterback, 10 carries for 65 yards against the Broncos, and he had five carries for 37 yards against the Seahawks. So those kind of quarterbacks that can create with their feet are always dangerous and is

50:19something to monitor relative to them. Now the AJ Brown edition to me is also interesting because if I have a question about the Seahawks cornerback room, especially if Nicky Minori is going to be out for this game, we don't know yet. It is size, Devin Witherspoon, great cornerback, thrilled to have him, could be fantastic for years to come. Remember that Arizona game down in Arizona and Marvin Harrison Jr. being able to post him up and make the play in the end zone to tie the game, right? Witherspoon was right there in perfect position, but just is not big enough to necessarily deal with those kinds of receivers and those kinds of moments. And so you can't just say we're going to stick Devin Witherspoon on AJ Brown and it'll

51:21be fine. I think that's a tough matchup for Devin Witherspoon. I think Josh Job is a guy you're more likely to try to put on him and Josh Job is very physical, but he's not the tallest and he's not the most athletic. So then you're having maybe an athletic advantage for AJ Brown in that. And then if you say, well, maybe they put AJ Brown in the slot, which I don't think they're going to do very much, but let's say they did, who are you going to put up against him there? I think AJ Brown is a problem for the Seahawks in this game. And that's one that I'm curious about. One that I will be kind of keeping an eye on to figure out how that shows up. Romeo Dobbs, I think is a really interesting player as well. I think he's he would have been better than most of the receivers they had last year. After obviously Stefan Diggs has a lot, you know, it's a great route runner, but he had he has declined for sure. Romeo Dobbs I think is an interesting player.

52:22And so they're receiver core of AJ Brown, Romeo Dobbs and DiMario Douglas. I think is an improvement. The tight end room though with losing Austin Hooper, the hunter Henry obviously is still there and very capable. I am curious how that's going to affect things because they did rely on those tight ends in the past game quite a bit. And then keep in mind, running back wise, Ramondrae Stevenson gets the bulk of the carries. He's kind of like the bell cow. But Trayvon Henderson was a really dynamic player, especially as a receiver, but he was atrocious in past protection, like atrocious atrocious. Let me pull open his numbers real quick. I'll tell you how bad he was. Trayvon Henderson. Whoops. Trayvon Henderson.

53:23My dog is losing his mind about someone doing some pressure washing outside. Hopefully that's not coming through your microphone to you guys. All right. So blocking. Let's go regular season. 23.6% sorry, 23.6 pass block grade for Trayvon Henderson last year. Where did that rank among all running backs during the regular season and post season, just to be as complete as possible. And we're going to go past blocking and we're going to go running backs. If I remember right, just from my prep for the Super Bowl last year, he was toward the bottom of the league in this number. It might have given up. Okay.

54:24So we're going to go. He was. Wow. Yeah. He ranked. 59th out of 67 running backs in his pass block grade. And in terms of pressures given up, he ranked fifth. He gave up 11 pressures last year. So when Trayvon Henderson is on the field, that's going to be a sign for send Evan Witherspoon. Send Nicki Norrief he's out there. Send somebody extra to get after Drake May and cause problems because Trayvon Henderson is not going to be there to be able to help in that regard. All right. Let me check Super Chats. And I know I've got some Venmo Super Chats too. Venmo.com slash Brian Dash. NEMHOWSER I'll get to those in a second. Mr. Northwest says, love your work. I think 12 and 5 is a record this year. I'm concerned about a running back situation and DB situation this year.

55:24Hope we use Arroyo more on offense. So good point. I should look up the players that were not available for that game that are going to be available in this game. In Elijah, Arroyo, I believe is one of those names. Joey Walker appreciate HB ticks and all your efforts. Any word on if the coasts will be having a press conference in Seattle. No idea on the press conference. If I know, I'll let you guys know. And thank you for appreciating HB ticks. So yeah, there's over a thousand tickets over there. Still some available for this game against the Patriots. Place to get C.O.X. tickets from C.O.X. fans and Protect Home Field advantage. So make sure you let people know about HB ticks. No fees. I don't like other than people can verify themselves and search for some prices for that. But that's only to cover my costs. I don't make anything off of this. It's just to try to protect home fields. So what was I going to look up? I was going to just look something up and I forgot.

56:24Oh, Venmo Superchats. Venmo Superchats. Let's pull those up. And I also want to look at some of the differences between these two teams. I'm not going to fit everything into this episode. We have days to go to do more previewing, but I couldn't wait. I just couldn't wait anymore. Hopefully that's cool with you guys. All right. Wow. We've got a lot from Mikey. So Mikey says, I wanted to thank you so much for all the efforts that you put into every show and for the research and things you do for your analysis and stats as well as bringing guests to make the show fun. Well, thank you for that. This is the second out of four Superchats. I also want to thank you for providing such valuable unbiased information. I know sometimes listeners have been complaining because they can't handle hearing anything that doesn't fit what they want to hear. But I genuinely admire that you always provide unbiased content. Well, I think that's nice. I don't claim to be unbiased. In fact, I think I am biased, but I try to lean on things like data that are not biased.

57:28Now you can cherry pick data and then be biased about what you talk about. But I do like to look at what data tells me because I am absolutely biased in favor of the Seahawks, but I want to protect my own mental and my own heart by anticipating where there could be things that are not going to go the Seahawks way and how do the Seahawks approach that and game plan for it. So I don't think it helps to just look at the positives, but I do appreciate what you're getting at. Mikey, three out of four. Whether it's what we want to hear or not, you have so much integrity in a field where most search for clicks and interactions. I really hope you know how much we appreciate you in the show. You've made this off season so much fun and it feels like more of an extended by week because of how much Seahawks content you've provided. I wish I could donate more, but I'm still in school and don't have a full-time job yet. But here's three bucks, times four for 12 bucks and 12s everywhere.

58:29Go Hawks, thanks, Brian. Mikey, that was really nice, you man. I'm so grateful that people spend money on this stuff. If you're at school, send me an email or something, dude. You don't have to spend money. You save your money for your books and for your girlfriend or your boyfriend or whatever it might be going out with your boys. But I really do appreciate it and thanks for the kind words. Then John Swanson, 12 by 2, gives 24 bucks. Thank you for that. I love the text. You picked a great time to leave text sales. Well, I didn't leave text sales. I wasn't in sales for tech, but I was in tech and yes, I do believe I picked a very good time to leave and I have no regrets. I loved my time in tech. I really did and I'm loving all the tech work that I'm doing now as part of this show. But I'll just quickly, I'll just say. There's people that I talk to and they're kind of like, oh, that's a cute little like

59:32they pat me on the head. That's a cute little thing you do over there with your podcast and talking about the footyball and that stuff. It kind of look at me weird and it's this patronizing thing of, you know, we're doing the real work over here and whatever corporate job they've got. And these are friends. These are people I like. But I kind of feel, not I wouldn't say the inverse. I don't pity people at all. I think there's a lot of great things about having a normal job where you're in there interacting with people every day and getting challenged and all that stuff. There's a lot of bullshit that I do not miss. And being able to make my own schedule, do what I want to do, go where I want to go, support my family, you know, in the ways I need to support them both financially and in terms of my time. It's tough. It's tough to beat, man. So yeah, and I want to take a second to on the PEMCO thing. PEMCO is going to be with us at least for the first couple months. We're going to see how this goes.

1:00:33But I've been a PEMCO customer for decades. And I've heard horror stories from people about their homeowner's insurance and when things go bad, how it turns for them, my mother-in-law being one of those people. We've had PEMCO for multiple different homes we have stayed in, we're owned over the years. And we've had trees fall in our house multiple times, crushed cars, crushed parts of the house. We've had floods and needing to completely redo things, like water damage. And the people at PEMCO have been unbelievable to work with every single time. And they are a Northwest-based company. They serve Washington and Oregon. They serve these states really well. They care about these states. They've done great stuff for Spokane Fire Relief. I just, I really believe they are a company I have had really positive experiences with. And I'm really excited to work with them.

1:01:33And we're just figuring out what we're going to be doing. But they are sponsoring in a way that is allowing me to do this season preview show tomorrow. We're going to have Mike Sando and Dave Bowling to kick it off. And we're going to have Brian Baldinger. Then we're going to have Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Then we're going to have Lindsey Rhodes. So like, we're going to have a list guests tomorrow. And I can't do that kind of stuff without sponsors. And PEMCO is a big part of it. Next week we're going to start Matt Hasselbach on Tuesday. We're going to have quandary digs back. I'm going to be talking with Doug Coyed from the Boston Herald on Sunday. So we're like, obviously we'll have Ceeock Saturday with Jeff on Saturday. Jeff Simmons shows coming up today at one o'clock. So this is the first season you're going to have a Jeff Simmons show every week as well. So, man, I'm so excited about this season. I'm getting energized. I'm looking forward in a little bit. I'm going to be going to the V-Mac this afternoon, talk with the players, listen to the,

1:02:36see what's going on in practice, who's on the field, who's not. Let's go. Like we're here. So, I cannot wait to dive into this more with all of you and appreciate it. I get this from Mr. Northwest. As a teacher, I appreciate tech and all the minds behind it. However, the tech world is very much succumbed to being wrapped in their own bubble. Yeah, honestly, I think everybody's wrapped in their own bubble. I mean, I won't go too existential on you on this, but I think the finance industry is in its own bubble. I think that the manufacturing industry is in its own bubble. I think the automobile industry is in its own bubble. Like, that's part of being deep in a specific area as you drink your coolate and you get really aware of the things that matter for your industry. Back is in full focus because it has such a broad implications for everybody.

1:03:39It's changing so much, but I don't know that it's in any more of a bubble than any other industry is. The aerospace industry, the defense industry, like there's all their olive bubbles. They're all in bubbles. At least the people I know in there, very much so. All right. Anything else before we sign off here? I think that's going to do it for this. This is just the first look. We're going to come back to the Sunday for sure with Doug. We'll talk about the changes with the Patriots. I'm going to dig in a little bit more about the changes. I'll write my tale, the tape article. We'll come back and do that again. One other thing. Let me see. Well, this is another, like I've told you guys, it's really silly. All the things I've developed over this offseason. But I built a tool. What it does is you can pull up any specific games and it will pull the outliers for any

1:04:46random statistics and players in that game. I pulled up the Super Bowl and outliers that it shows. I'm going to put this up here. You guys can handle this. I'm going to remove this. Stop screen. Let me share screen. We're going to share this one. I think it's this one. I'm going to share this one. All right. We'll put this up on stage. It's going to be a little bit hard for you guys to see. Hopefully you can see it. This is the Super Bowl from last year. Let's make this a little bit big. These are the things that were coming from Sumer Sports, their API, and anything that is more than one standard deviation from the average. The average is calculated by every game played in the playoffs last year. You could do regular season as well, but this is just looking at postseason numbers.

1:05:48Ken Walker in that game had 0.276 tackles avoided per touch. That was one and a half standard deviations above the league average. Yards after contact per touch, 3.83. That was also one and a half standard deviations over average. It also shows negative things. Cooper Cup was targeted a lot in that game. He was over two standard deviations above in terms of target rate. Jake Bobo. That's sad. I don't like seeing that. I guess the Lajaro did play in that game. I don't know. Rashid Shaheed average depth of target was 49 yards. That's wild. Jackson Smith and Jigba, his target was high. That's not a big surprise. Nothing too interesting there. Pass rush. Pass for pass rush snap by Murphy and Derek Hall. No surprise. Well above the standard deviation, the league average there.

1:06:52Pass protection. Gray's able blocks lost per snap. He was one and a half, almost two standard deviations below the league average. He had a higher, he did not have a good game against the Patriots. Remember, he had an injury that he was dealing with. Jared Wilson also, as we know, did not have a good game. Ablukas did have a good game and Will Campbell did not. So that's kind of an interesting from a pass protection standpoint. Coverage wise. Josh Job and Rick Wullen both pressed at a very high rate, 48% press rate for Josh Job, 46% press rate for Rick Wullen. That's interesting. Like that's not, the Seahawks are not always a high press team. And I wonder if there's something that they saw there. I don't know if you're going to press AJ Brown and Romeo Dobbs the way that the Seahawks felt comfortable pressing some of these other guys. That could be a material change. Rick Wullen, really good catch rate, allowed.

1:07:57Let's see. Run defense by Murphy. Tag was for loss per run defense snap. Almost five standard deviations above the average that is insane. William's had a bunch of missed tackles. Their defensive tackle, Christian Barmore also had a bunch of missed tackles. Those are their two hogs on the inside of that defensive tackle group. Now Jalen Hawkins had a missed lot of missed tackles. Josh Job had a good game. I think people forget he had a really good game. Ernest Jones had a good game, Devin Witherspoon obviously had a good game. And these are just top speeds from that game. My approach clocked in at 22.4 miles an hour in that game. Conno, a tool 19 point. This must be special teams. Snaps. Vales Jones was in that game. So anyway, that's just a little bit of fun. A little bit of fun looking at things that are kind of standing out from that game versus

1:09:02others. So now we're going to say that'll do it for this episode. I'll be back with you later. Well tomorrow for sure, Jeff Simmons will be on with you at one. Jeff's always got great stuff. Until next time, have a great rest of you for your day.