How Seahawks' Defense Adjusted For Saints RB Alvin Kamara
The Seahawks' rush defense manage to hold running back Alvin Kamara to 51 yards on the ground. Kamara could only manage a 2.55 yards per carry average on his 20 attempts. And yet, the 26-year old star was still named NFC Offensive Player of the Week.
That’s because Kamara is, of course, an all-around weapon. He was responsible for 59 percent of the Saints’ yards from scrimmage in the Monday Night Football matchup. According to @Crimealytics, the last New Orleans player to account for at least that much of the team’s offense was Kamara himself, again versus Seattle, in 2019.
So why did the Seahawks defense not learn for 2021? Well, they sort of did. While Kamara’s eight catches for 109 yards and a touchdown at halftime was a majorly disappointing stat line from a Seattle gameplan perspective, the Seahawks adjusted to execution errors to remove Kamara from the aerial game too. Indeed, Kamara caught just two second-half passes for 15 yards. They effectively removed Jameis Winston’s go-to target on the night.
Kamara largely caught footballs in the soft spot of Seattle’s zone coverage. These were not explosive passes and the Seahawks were happy to rally to these. Meanwhile, Kamara’s 23-yard catch on a screen pass early in the second quarter was merely a case of the football chess match playing out. It was intelligent design to beat Seattle’s man coverage, the kind of deal that works once in a game.
The real issues arrived at the end of the half. The result was two catches for 44 yards and a touchdown that contradicted the supposed flow of the game up to that point.
First came dime safety Ryan Neal getting twisted around by Kamara in aggressive, zone-match coverage. The concept is new to Seattle’s defense in 2021, appearing to play cover 2 zone defense to the three-receiver side and cover 4 robber weak side.
Neal, on the backside matching up with Kamara, pushed outside with Kamara’s release. Kamara had the option on his route to break outside or inside based off the defender leverage and technique. He can also nestle underneath versus off zone. On this play, it’s likely Kamara read the defender leverage as man-to-man and saw no player in the low middle of the field.
Neal should have maintained firm inside leverage on Kamara. However, Kamara’s stem was deceptive and his cut agile. This led to Neal overstepping outside. With Bobby Wagner’s technique seeing him run to the high hole with his back turned to the play, Kamara had so much room to catch and run, ending with 31 yards.
The touchdown catch showed the “nestled” choice from Kamara in his option route. The Seahawks straight-up busted their coverage down in the red zone. You can see from the footage that both Jamal Adams and Neal took their eyes to the No. 3 receiver on the strong side of the formation. Neither of them paid attention to Kamara on the weak side until it was far too late.
There are a lot of potential explanations for this, yet the most likely theory is that Neal got confused with his history as a strong safety and defaulted to that role after hearing the call.
Kamara was left all alone, so he nestled in the space. The fumble from Winston was inconsequential and with both Adams and Neal visioning the No. 3 receiver, neither of the pair saw it happen. Neal was out-leveraged to the corner and his desperate tackling attempt slipped off Kamara.
The Seahawks' defense and Ken Norton Jr. learned from these moments.
“We mixed our coverages well last week, made a nice adjustment at half time to make sure that Kamara didn’t catch too many balls in that game,” head coach Pete Carroll told reporters on Wednesday.
The adjustment saw Seattle play cover 1 man-to-man defense where, rather than one of the linebackers rat or play the low hole, both linebackers looked to double Kamara. With the Saints spamming Kamara’s option route, where he could break inside or outside, this placed a defender tight and on Kamara’s outside, and a defender tight and on the inside of the back. It worked.
When New Orleans moved to re-introduce Kamara passing game-wise, the Seahawks’ defenders executed better. The Saints shifted to split Kamara out wide, therefore removing the double linebacker bracket that Seattle placed on him. This isolated Jordyn Brooks on the perimeter with Kamara, additionally giving Winston the pre-snap intelligence that he was facing man coverage.
Quandre Diggs cheated his middle 1/3 over to Kamara’s side to double cover him. Yet, the split meant Diggs, realistically, was still in a tough spot to make a play on a sideline shot by the numbers.
However, Brooks was fantastic in his 3rd and 5 man-to-man assignment. He stayed patient with Kamara’s release, honoring—but not biting—on the inside stutter. The linebacker had the speed to get back in phase with Kamara, whose wide release had shrunk the available space for a sideline shot.
Winston took one look and hitch at Brooks’ transition before quickly deciding he wanted no part of the throw. By that point, Seattle’s pass rush games up front had started to discomfort the quarterback and he was forced to loft a hopeful pass in the other direction. The ball landed incomplete and the Seahawks held the Saints to three points.
So the end-of-game numbers look worse thanks to two terrible, lapse moments of execution on the same drive. With Kamara, a running back, being such an alignment- and assignment-versatile player, it is also tricky to stop him from getting his yards.
How the Seahawks adjusted to Kamara is not a sustainable strategy for every down. Instead, it was a quality move in the right moment and situation. It put the clamps on New Orleans’ most dangerous threat when it really mattered, stifling the Saints offense down the stretch. A successful move for Norton.
