Another reason for keeping linebackers on the field more often is that it helps the Seahawks accomplish one of their main defensive goals, which is to stop the run. The Seahawks expected Cincinnati to try to run the ball in Week 1 given Joe Mixon's success, and perhaps because they saw so many base looks, the Bengals all but abandoned the run, rushing for 34 yards on 14 carries. Last week the Steelers managed 81 yards on 16 carries, but 23 of those yards came on one play.

As Carroll put it prior to the start of the season, the priority on defense has "always been to stop the run first. Always. That's where we begin, and the next aspect of it is making sure they can't score easily (on big pass plays)… If people can run the football, it's too easy."

And for teams that usually look to run when opposing defenses put lighter personnel on the field, Seattle's commitment to playing base defense can cause some issues.

"That creates problems for you when you're trying to look at your sub run-game plan, and how you're going to attack it if you don't know that you're getting a sub defense," Saints coach Sean Payton said on a conference call. "You see that a lot of times from some of the 3-4 teams, but we're seeing it now in Seattle's first two games."

Said Wright, "I think it's a big advantage, you've got big guys out there. Usually what teams do was they would make us go small, then run the ball on us. The beauty of it is you've got the big guys out there, you're not going to be able to run against us—you shouldn't be able to run against us. We saw it in the first two weeks, we did pretty solid against the run, and we've definitely got to continue that this week with (Saints running back Alvin Kamara) in the backfield."

Of course, for a base-heavy defense to work, the linebackers know it's on them to take care of their responsibilities in the passing game. While the Seahawks gave up a lot of passing yards in Week 1, a lot of that had to due with a conservative game plan against an unknown opponent—the Bengals had an almost entirely new coaching staff, making them difficult to plan for in Week 1—that saw the Seahawks content to give up a lot of short completions; less acceptable were a few big ones for touchdowns. And last week the Seahawks limited Pittsburgh to 180 passing yards, including holding starter Ben Roethlisberger to a stat line of 8 for 15 for 75 yards before he left the game with an injury.

"The more linebackers, the merrier in my opinion," Wagner said. "I think we kind of force teams where, 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. We've got a lot of different personnel that we can play. Last year, we had a lot of DBs and we showed that we could do really, really well with that. This year, we have a lot of linebackers and showed we can do really well with that as well."

Wright knows it's on him and his fellow linebackers to show coaches that the Seahawks can have success, even against pass-first offenses, if this trend is going to continue, and he thinks they have the ability to get that job done.