3 Steps to a Healthier Conversation About the Seahawks Offensive Line

The Seahawks offensive line isn’t broken, we are

In recent years, nothing has brought out the belligerence of Seattle sports fans more than the Seahawks offensive line. With years of underwhelming pass protection and high sack totals, the line is an obvious target for a fan-base that hasn’t had much else to complain about in its championship era.

The strong feelings have created a disconnect between perception and reality, and a divide between fans over just how bad the offensive line really is. As the disagreement drags out, each side grows entrenched in its point of view and increasingly uses more fiery rhetoric than clear-eyed analysis.

While we endlessly re-litigate old complaints, our ability to see the present clearly has been distorted by the past. Negativity and bias taint our perceptions and impede our ability to look at the 2016 line with fresh eyes and open minds.

Whether this year’s line is any good or not will ultimately be determined on the field. But it will be a long time until that’s resolved one way or another, so in the meantime it’s worth taking a step back and rediscovering our even-keel.

Let’s reset the conversation.

Getting the dialogue back on a healthier track starts with adopting a balanced perspective on what the line has been good at and where its coach needs help moving forward.

We can do that in three steps.

Step 1: Agree that Tom Cable is an effective o-line coach

This simple statement is supported by the results of Cable’s offense over the past four years.

Pete Carroll wants the Seahawks to be a run-first team so that’s exactly what Cable coaches them to do. With a top five rushing attack in each of the past four years, Cable’s lines succeeded in the area of greatest emphasis. Likewise, the offense’s overall production — four straight top 10 finishes in points — show that the line’s performance has not crippled the team’s ability to compete.

However, defending the line’s successes isn’t an excuse to gloss over its failures. The primary weaknesses of the Seahawks line over the past three years (high sack rates) put the team’s greatest asset at risk. While Russell Wilson emerged unscathed in the past, all it takes is one hit in the future for this catastrophic risk to be realized.

Step 2: Acknowledge there are valid criticisms of Cable

Just because the line has been good enough to win doesn’t mean it’s been optimized. Getting better starts with understanding where the team is falling short. In this vein, I see two valid criticisms of the way the Cable handles the offensive line.

First, Cable is an above average coach, but average to below average at talent evaluation.

While Cable’s results have been strong, he hasn’t arrived at success the easy way. While perfection is unreasonable, Cable’s track record at talent evaluation is mixed at best (assuming he has a big say in the linemen John Schneider drafts). James Carpenter (first round pick) underwhelmed before leaving after his first contract, John Moffitt’s (third round pick) struggles led to an early departure from the team, and Justin Britt (second round pick) is yet to show he’s good enough to stick at any of the three line positions he’s occupied in his first three years on the team.

None of these selections were downright failures, but draft capital is precious, and considering how high each player was drafted the results aren’t good enough. Given how Cable has coached several players of lower draft status to much better results (J.R. Sweezy and Garry Gilliam, in particular), it’s fair to consider this an issue of sub par talent evaluation rather than sub par coaching.

Second, Cable either tinkers too much or he’s indecisive.

As I’ve written before, Cable might be a guru, but he isn’t a miracle worker. In 2012, Cable had a moment of genius when he drafted and converted Sweezy, a college defensive lineman, to a successful offensive lineman. It was a triumph of vision, conviction and coaching. Cable deserves all the praise he’s received for this bold move.

However, the very outside-the-box thinking that made this move such a success has handicapped the team at other times as Cable is prone to out-think and out-innovate himself. He’s addicted to tinkering, with a dizzying array of position swaps being his year-over-year norm. He’s experimentally indulgent.

Too often Cable plays with the mixture too far into the season, keeping the group in a constant state of flux. Last year, the line’s lack of stability, continuity and competence upset the offense’s rhythm and resulted in an alarmingly high sack rate during the first half of the season.

Specifically, it would have been great if last year’s project, former defensive lineman Drew Nowak, turned out to be Cable’s next success story, but it didn’t happen. While the perfectly serviceable Patrick Lewis sat on the bench for half the year, Nowak struggled mightily at center and routinely imperiled his quarterback. While this risky move was admirable in the abstract it was painful in reality.

Step three: Take criticisms in the spirit they are intended

For all of Cable’s savvy and ability, he has blind spots that challenge the line’s ability to maximize its potential. These blind spots have yet to prevent the team from eventually stabilizing in-season, but with the margin for success being so small in the NFL, stability from the outset needs to be the goal.

These issues don’t need to plague 2016 line, in fact, identifying these gaps can prevent them from becoming inevitable. Either Cable can self-correct or Carroll should provide clearer guidance. Cable doesn’t need to be told how to coach, but he would benefit from more robust parameters on what he can do, for how long and for what end.

Neither the offensive line nor its coach is broken, but they aren’t infallible either. We should be able to say so without casting it as an indictment on the whole product. The more balance we bring to our assessment of the line’s play, the more grace we insert into our analysis, the more we’ll find ourselves detoxing from past battles and finding the common ground we need to have a productive conversation.

This 2016 team, including its offensive line, could be pretty darn good. Let’s get to the place where we can accept that and appreciate all the parts, despite their imperfections.

Time to reset.

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