When a unit adds talent, Josh Wilson, but regresses to become one of the worst secondaries in the NFL, it's only logical to focus criticism on that unit's coach. Unfortunately, that defies clean delineation. Seattle's secondary was awful in 2006. Part of its improvement in 2007 was the addition of that coordinator. So, if Seattle added talent, has no players at an age you would expect decline, has maintained a reasonable amount of pass rush and is still one of the best rush defenses in the NFL, what the fuck is going on?
The answer is so simple it could be crossed applied to any job across the world. When Seattle pre-promoted Jim L. Mora it took away all incentive and accountability. What more could he achieve? The head coaching job was his. How could he fail? He's not really the secondary coach anymore. He certainly isn't going to be fired.
His unit has dissolved. Seattle's secondary is simultaneously executing so poorly and aligned in such spellbindingly stupid and self-defeating formations, it's become a bit of a chicken or egg argument deciding what's ruining what. This coordinated failure is something miraculous and unexplainable but still somehow true like the simultaneous evolution of the egg and the egg tooth. Whichever is more to blame, it's both symptomatic of bad coaching.
And yet, I don't think this condemns Mora the head coach. No, this is on Paul Allen, Tod Leiweke and Tim Ruskell, who took a good business idea, naming a successor to ease transition, and mistakenly applied it to the world of cutthroat athletic competition. I was duped. It sounded smart. It's failed. The secondary is in ruins and the only solution I see is Mora assuming the head coaching duties and someone who gives a damn, someone with incentive and accountability, to become Seattle's secondary coach.
Game Ball: Brandon Mebane. My absolute favorite Seahawk. Kid is developing into a monster defensive tackle. Mebane is an important reminder that it's not the size of Seattle's defense that's killing them, it's the execution. Kelly Jennings could be ten feet tall, but the way he falls, he'd still suck. What the hell has happened to you Jennings?