What Could Mora Be Thinking

by: William P. Tomisser

Well, all you addicts in Seahawks land, we’re now officially post Holmgren and in very beginning of the Mora Era. It might be a little while before we get some glimmerings of what his plans will be, but I hope to see some indications that he’s hitting the floor running and soon. Without Mora giving us any tidbits yet to glean what he might be thinking in regard to the direction the team will head, it leaves a great big hole that we at Seahawk Addicts can’t resist filling with our own speculations.

With the 4th pick in the draft, Mora should get a pretty good player to shape one of his squads around. Will he go for a bolstering of the defensive backfield where he has coached the last two seasons and has the most intimate knowledge of the talent? Will he give his new OC, whoever that turns out to be, an opportunity to draft a stud to build his offense around whether it’s a skill player like Crabtree or an impact player for the trenches in one of the top three tackles available? Maybe, he gives his new DC the chance to get the best defensive player we can to jump start a defense considered already talented by most observers but who also woefully underplayed their potential last season.

Just what is Mora thinking?

A lot of us have been speculating about who the Seahawks might draft in April but I’m not so sure we haven’t been able to get Holmgren and his WCO out of our minds as we did so. The wide receiver Crabtree, one of the offensive tackles Smith, Oher, or Monroe, the cornerback Jenkins, the center Mack, the safety Mays, the defensive end Orakpo, and the top rated quarterbacks Bradford, Stafford, and Tebow have probably been the most talked about players so far in this forum. Some of them would be considered a reach in the top 10 and would probably require a trade down to make them a feasible choice.

What we haven’t talked about too much is in what direction Mora might point the team with respect to offensive and defensive schemes and how that might affect how the draft is conducted in terms of player selection.

In Atlanta, Mora ran an offense that featured the quarterback as a running threat and was pretty successful before they found out Vick couldn’t throw for beans. That offense might not put the premium on receivers that the WCO did for example. The new defensive coordinator might want to run a 3 – 4 defense instead of the 4 – 3 Seattle has run throughout most of it’s history. That would put a premium on linebackers and a great nose tackle.

We may have all been a little guilty of thinking about the draft as a means to fix the current team and it’s current problem areas when we don’t really know how much next years team will resemble this one on offense and defense and how close their respective philosophies will be to the way things are now being run. We’ve all pretty much said we want to get Marshall and his scheme out of here. No one seems to be too crazy about hiring Knapp either who is probably the safest offensive coordinator prospect outside of Haskell to count on to continue to run a version of the WCO that is close to what Holmgren has installed.

The point of discussion is what you Addicts would like to see happen next season when Mora takes over as far as continuing or discontinuing the current offensive and defensive schemes and how that choice might affect who we draft? Secondly, how close to the way our offense and defense currently operate scheme wise do you think Mora will design his offense and defense? Will we still run the WCO that the offense and particularly Hasslebeck knows so well and that Tampa Cover 2 “D”? Are we going to be bringing new offense and/or new defense to the plate next season?

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