In the mid-late 2010s, the NBA turned heliocentric. The general idea was that a team has one clearly dominant guard, why not just have that guy make virtually every decision for the team.
The poster boy for it was James Harden and the Rockets. Between 2014 and 2019, Harden was never below a 30% usage rate for a season. It was generally successful in the regular season, with the Rockets at .500 or over every year of that run.
But in the playoffs, it tended not to work as well. Teams would key in on Harden dribbling the ball at the top of the key and would sit on him, secure in the knowledge that nobody else had done anything all season.
The heliocentric Harden Rockets became predictable in the playoffs and were beatable. Part of it was the Warriors, but another part of it was the style. They became easy to play, even if Harden was hard to play.
Earlier this season I wrote a piece titled “why not Seattle?”
I think I have my answer. It’s got nothing to do with their totally dominant defence, that has allowed 9 points and forced 8 turnovers over the last two games.
It’s also, strangely, got nothing to do with their awful running game, which is 25th in success rate.
The Hawks are regularly in multiple tight end looks, regularly have their quarterback under centre out of those looks, and can still throw deep out of it despite a poor run game. That means they get the key benefit of a strong run game – a great play action game – without necessarily needing to run it effectively.
Their ability to generate chunks out of play action, or even effectively do a play action fake even without pretending to hand the ball to a running back is why Darnold is 10th in play action pass attempts and third in play action pass yards.
In fact, that dominant play action passing game is the problem. Or at least what it relies on.
Like the James Harden Rockets, the Seahawks are at risk of being too predictable.
The whole play action, chunk passing game is built out of one player: Jaxon Smith Njigba.
In a strange way, the thing that they do the best threatens to be their greatest downfall. Like Ben Askren, the great wrestler who only wanted to wrestle, and ended up getting kneed into next week by Jorge Masvidal as a result.
But first, JSN the player. While not a completely physically dominant player like Ja’Marr Chase, JSN is among the smoothest athletes in the league. He can do everything at top speed which makes him impossible to stay with as he moves in and out of breaks.
He makes his money vertically, but is also lethal over the middle. That versatility makes his route tree look like nobody else’s.
The dynamic between JSN the smaller, hyper productive guy and Ja’Marr Chase the physical freak reminds me a bit of the Antonio Brown v Julio Jones days. On one hand, you had the lab grown freak and on the other hand you had the guy who looked normal but also had better counting stats.
Speaking of counting stats, JSN’s are silly. He’s up to 1,428 yards and 9 touchdowns on the year leading the league in yards by about 300.
The next closest Seahawk is Cooper Kupp with 473 receiving yards. That’s just inside the league’s top-70 in receiving yards.
He accounts for roughly half of the team’s entire passing production. Beyond that, I wrote earlier that the Seahawks’ offence is heavily reliant on chunk gains out of play action. JSN has only one game this year where he has not recorded a reception of 26 or more yards.
I can’t ever remember a team that was this good being this reliant on an offensive skill player. Imagine if Adrian Peterson’s 2012 Vikings were a genuine Super Bowl contender.
The Seahawks and Klint Kubiak are a bit Rams-ish in their ability to make sure that their best players get chances.
But every receiver can be taken out of a game.
An enduring aspect of Bill Belichick’s genius was his ability to neutralise the other team’s best players and just make someone else beat him. HIs famous call on star receivers was “one double whatever number they are wearing.” So for JSN, it would be “one double 11.”
The Belichick method was to play his second best corner on the best receiver and then double over the top with a safety. He’d tilt the entire field over to that player and then have his best corner on the second-best receiver.
Brian Flores, who worked under Belichick for years, did just that to Seattle in their 26-0 loss to the Seahawks.
Don’t be fooled by the score, which was driven by Seattle’s dominant defence, this was a tough day for the Seahawks offensively. They had just 94 passing yards on the game and had their third worst EPA game on offence.
JSN was taken out of the game at the Seahawks offence had nothing.
Clearly not every team can take him out. It’s easier said than done.
The Falcons, who have an elite corner and played Seattle the week after the Flores game, left AJ Terrell to fend for himself against JSN and got killed.
But in the playoffs, as game-planning gets more intense, teams are going to put more work into at the very least forcing JSN to beat them horizontally rather than vertically. And now there’s a blueprint to do it.
Their acquisition of Rashid Shaheed shows that they know this is a potential problem, but he hasn’t meshed as quickly as hoped. Though, with 4/67 against the Falcons, he might be starting to blend into the team.
If Shaheed doesn’t get going, we know that they can’t run the ball, and JSN can’t get vertical on play action, can Seattle still win it all?
I doubt it.