The Seahawks finally found something that works on the ground.
The Seattle Seahawks’ ground game is … to say it kindly, poor. Entering Week 14, the Seattle run game was 30th in EPA per play and 24th in Success Rate. Neither very impressive numbers, and it hampered the full effectiveness of their offense and forced everything on QB Geno Smith, who is still very good, but has felt the effects of that. Seattle needed to find something that worked on the ground, and luckily it came in their pivotal division game against the Arizona Cardinals in the form of every college coach’s favorite run scheme: GT Counter.
For those uninformed, GT Counter is just a counter play, but the Guard and Tackle (GT) are the ones pulling instead of a Guard and tight end (mostly named GH Counter). It’s a gap scheme play that has become a go to for a lot of spread teams, but the Seahawks found massive success with it against the Cardinals. Sure, it could be just a one-game quirk: while I love the potential of the Cardinals’ defense, they make most of their hay defeating zone blocks with blitzing and stemming and not gap scheme because they’re simply too small at this stage of their team-building.
However, I’m choosing to believe that this could be the beginning of the Seahawks finding literally anything that works in their ground game. Let’s see how they did it and how it could lead to some pretty fun stuff in the future for Seattle.
On this rep, the Cardinals are in a pseudo five man front, but Mack Wilson is their edge guy coming from depth. That normally means he’s a coverage guy and has to keep backside contain. There’s a nose tackle and two ends in a 4i (inside shoulder of the tackle) and another EDGE to the formation’s left. The Seahawks manipulate this first by sending WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba in motion. Not only does this keep Wilson out of the fit, but the motion moves LB Kyzir White as well. So, from there the Cardinals get six defenders in the box, but two of those defenders are a cornerback and a safety. Not the best players you want hitting a bigger lineman in the run game. The Seahawks run GT Counter, and look at how the look opens up when RG Sataoa Laumea first kicks out the EDGE.
You get a great seal on the 4i by LT Charles Cross, and then TE AJ Barner gets straight to the safety. The next thing you know, RB Zach Charbonnet is running for a big gain.
The big Zach Charbonnet touchdown was a beautifully blocked rep of GT Counter, catching the Cardinals in a blitz. Blitzing zone runs is a lot better than gap runs, because if you blitz to or from the blitz, the defensive line is shifting their movement post-snap to occupy areas that zone runs don’t account for. With gap runs, the blitz doesn’t throw things off kilter as much because you end up slanting into or away from a down block, and can get washed out. The Cardinals send S Budda Baker on a blitz to the defense’s left side, and the defensive line slants the other way to account for the new player brought down in the run fit.
I want you to watch the end to the trips side of the offensive formation on this play. Because he slants to the outside shoulder of the tackle, he ends up first going too wide and creating the lane, and is swiftly punished for it by getting absolutely cratered by Laumea. The lane is so wide that the right tackle coming across also doesn’t have to get too much of Kyzir White because Charbonnet cuts this and takes it to the end zone. This is a beautiful rep of GT Counter, and I think the Seahawks might’ve found something here.
This is a pretty dope rep out of a more spread formation, with no tight end attached to the formation. The defensive end to the right side of the formation ends up slanting to the backside A-gap, but the problem here is that this rep of GT Counter is getting the pullers from the left side, so the right guard and right tackle end up down blocking. This end washes himself out the play, and again Charbonnet is running all up and down the field.
The Seahawks found a lot of success on the ground en route to 138 rushing yards in one of their biggest wins of the season. Their defensive resurgence takes most of the limelight (for good reason because that defense is INCREDIBLE right now), but this game was important for the Seahawks’ offense because they found something sustainable on the ground on the back of GT Counter. Now, with the division lead in tow and four pivotal games against NFC opponents still left, the Seahawks have a formula for success on both sides of the ball.
