@FiveStarGam1ng asks, “Best defense since the LOB?”
A: Presuming you’re defining the LOB era roughly as the time that Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor and Richard Sherman played together, then I would say that, yes, this current defense, assuming it continues at anything close to this level the rest of the season, will be the Seahawks’ best since the LOB era, and by a pretty good margin.
The defense that John Schneider and Pete Carroll built last decade set a bar that will be tough for any team, this one included, to top, starting in 2012 when Seattle led the league in scoring defense, starting a four-season streak of leading the league in that stat, making the Seahawks the only team to accomplish that in the Super Bowl era. And in 2013, the Seahawks led the league in total defense, scoring defense, passing defense and takeaways, then went on to dominate the highest scoring offense in NFL history, holding Peyton Manning and company to eight points.
So having said all of that, it’s not really fair to those teams, or to the current one, to compare this defense to the very best of that era, at least at this point, it is pretty clear that what the Seahawks are doing on defense right now under Mike Macdonald is pretty impressive in its own right.
In 2016, the last year Thomas, Chancellor and Sherman all played a full season together—both Chancellor and Sherman suffered season-ending injuries midway through the 2017 season, with Chancellor’s neck injury ending his career—the Seahawks finished third in the NFL in scoring defense and fifth in total defense on the way to another NFC West title. Since then, the Seahawks have finished outside of the Top 10 in both categories every season. In Macdonald’s first season in Seattle, the Seahawks finished 11th in points allowed and 14th in yards allowed, but made a big turn in the second half of the season, and they look to be picking up where they left off, if not improving, heading into their second season running Macdonald’s defense.
Granted, it has only been four games, so there’s still a lot of work to do, but the Seahawks currently rank second in points allowed, 13th in total defense, sixth in sacks and seventh in takeaways. The Seahawks are stopping the run, generating pressure with their front four, are tough to throw on, and given the talent and depth the Seahawks have at all three levels, it all feels very sustainable, if not something that could get even better as the year progresses.