Few position battles were tracked as closely by Seattle Seahawks fans this summer than the battle to replace Justin Coleman as the nickel cornerback.

It turns out, at least based on the first two games of the season, Seattle may not need a nickelback that much after all.

The Seahawks have stuck with their base 4-3 defense for 84 snaps this season – the highest mark in the league by a considerable margin, according to ESPN.

The 4-3 defense keeps Seattle’s three linebackers – Bobby Wagner, K.J. Wright and Mychal Kendricks – on the field at the same time, while the nickel package replaces one of the linebackers with an extra defensive back.

While Seattle has been reliant on nickel packages in the past, the trio of linebackers helped steer coach Pete Carroll and defensive coordinator Ken Norton, Jr. – a former linebacker himself – in a different direction.

That’s certainly okay with Wagner.

“The more linebackers, the merrier in my opinion,” Wagner cracked on Wednesday. “I think we kind of force teams where, if they want to pass, when they see base they want to come out and try to pass the ball, but when you’re dropping your hooks and drop in your zones, they tend to check it down to those intermediate routes and you got pretty big bodies to come make the tackles. I think it’s fun. It just adds another dynamic to our defense.”

The Seahawks rotated between four different options at nickelback this summer – Jamar Taylor, Akeem King, Kalan Reed and Ugo Amadi.

However, they were unable to find someone they felt comfortable taking extensive snaps at the nickel spot in 2019 – at least not over the comfort level Carroll feels with his three linebacker set.

“I really feel, this is as honest as I can get with you guys, I feel like we’re just getting started,” Carroll commented on Monday about the three linebacker sets. “I feel like we’re just getting going on what we can do and how to count on these guys and how to utilize their strengths. There’s individual strengths that we really understand about K.J. [Wright] and Bobby [Wagner]. We’ve been together for so long. Mychal we’re learning, but it’s more about the flow between those guys and how we can play off each other and all of that. I think we’re going to get better. I think we’re going to improve and we’re going to know more and we’re going to be more accurate with our calls and the way we use guys and all that.”

The Seahawks have Taylor, King and Amadi all on the active roster, so they have plenty of options when they do need to go nickel. However, as long as the three linebacker sets are getting the job done, expect Carroll and company to stick with them.

“Last year, we had a lot of DBs and we showed that we could do really, really well with that,” Wagner continued. “This year, we have a lot of linebackers and showed we can do really well with that as well.”