Film review of Seahawks passing against Cowboys courtesy of Seth Galina

In the comments to the Tuesday article on the run game and third and manageable, a commenter asked for a film review of the Seattle Seahawks passing game against the Dallas Cowboys. I do not have my normal dual monitor work configuration this week, and film review is absolutely horrendous to do on a single screen, so what I’m going to do is to take a look at an existing review of the Seahawks passing game that was done last week in the wake of the game by Seth Galina.

For those who are unfamiliar with Seth, he writes for The Athletic Detroit, but the most important credential to consider here when reading his analysis here is that he is a quarterbacks coach. He knows what he’s talking about, and he does good work. He has a two tweet system when he looks at plays, where the first tweet is a series of stills, where he lays out the routes of each of the receivers, and then in a second tweet he provides the full play from the coaches film available on NFL Gamepass.

Thus, without too much more yammering, here are nine plays that he reviewed following the loss in Dallas. First, though, let me preface everything with one note from Galina from late in the season.

So, keep that in mind as your read through the thread, as it gives some insight into his position on the Hawks offense.

Play 1:

Play 2:

Play 3:

Play 4:

Play 5:

Play 6:

Play 7:

Play 8:

Play 9:

That’s pretty much that. One more point that came up in this thread from Galina was a response to a question posed by our own film phenom, Matty F. Brown, so here is that exchange.

After you have seen the work that Matty does here at Field Gulls, I would hope that you are already following him on Twitter (@mattyfbrown), and Seth is a quality follow as well (@SethGalina). He explains what he is looking at in good detail, and while he tends to occasionally use coach lingo to describe things, that’s nothing that a quick google search can’t help explain.

Now, just for a couple of examples of what things looked like when “there’s just no one open”, here’s a couple of stills from plays he did not cover in his thread.

For the first one, look at how well the linebacker dropped into coverage and then anticipated a curl at the sticks from Doug Baldwin.

And then, oh boy, it’s 3rd & 7, so let’s call the play where half of the receivers run a curl route short of the sticks while the other two go deep and we throw a low percentage toss up to the corner.

Now, for those fans who have argued that Kris Richard being on the Dallas coaching staff was the difference in the game because he knew the offensive plays that were coming, I still don’t buy that argument.

However, what I do buy is that Richard took Pete Carroll’s aggressive coaching of defensive backs and taught it to the Dallas defenders, and that had an impact on the game. The last still above with the two receivers running curl routes that are short of the first down was an incomplete pass to Baldwin, the receiver at the top of the field heading for the end zone. The pass was good and could have been caught by Baldwin, but let’s take a look at what the defensive back did just before the ball got to Doug.

That is the defensive back using both hands to momentarily clamp Baldwin’s wrist just a split second before the ball arrives. The corner back releases it almost instantly, but it appears to have thrown Baldwin off balance just enough that he could not readjust and get his hands up to cleanly catch the ball. While this likely could have been a penalty, as has been repeated time and again over the past five years, officials aren’t going to call pass interference on every play.

So it would seem one may be more easily able blame Richard for exporting Carroll’s style of defensive back play than for Richard knowing the Seahawks offensive playbook.