Just got back from my second credentialed practice of the summer and it was by far the most interesting and entertaining. It was a long workout, going over two hours and featured plenty of 11-on-11 work in the last half hour.
If there was a headline of this practice it would have to be that the Brady-Cooks connection is hitting a new level. I wasn’t around to see what practices with Randy Moss looked like, but Brady is throwing deep to Cooks early and often. Cooks came down with multiple deep catches that drew oohs and aahs from the crowd.
And it wasn’t just Cooks, Chris Hogan got into the action on the deep balls, while Edelman and Gronk had a handful of their usual big plays.
All in all, you look at the offense and it’s easy to imagine what a nightmare they’re going to be for defenses all season long.
More on everything from a fun day of practice after the jump…
— Jack DeDonato (@JDeDonato23) August 7, 2017
The Seahawks have the Legion of Boom, the secondary that defines excellence in the modern NFL. The unit helmed by Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor and Richard Sherman instills the fear of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy on receivers on a weekly basis. The duo of safeties uses solid and technically sound acts of violence to intimidate opposing pass catchers who seek refuge over the middle of the field. It’s an impressive scheme that requires outstandingly athletic and brutal safeties and opportunistic corners to be successful. Pete Carroll has invested heavily in this unit, using almost 1/5 of his cap space on those three players. That may seem like a sustainable allocation of resources on arguably the best three players on your team, but as we saw last year they completely cratered after suffering the Earl Thomas injury because they could no longer serve their mantra “every last blade of grass” without depth at the position.