Atlanta's Michael Jenkins gets past Seattle cornerback Kennard Cox for a second-quarter touchdown (Drew Sellers/Sportspress Northwest)

Jim Mora the elder once famously told a room full of sports reporters the following truth about what the game film revealed: “You guys really don’t know when it’s good or bad when it comes right down to it. I’m promising you right now that you don’t know if it’s good or bad. You don’t know what we’re trying to do. You don’t look at the films. You don’t know what happened.

“You think you know, but you … don’t … know. And you … never … will.”

As dismissive as Mora sounded that day, he had a point. It is almost impossible to understand what a team is doing, whether good or bad, on the field unless you’re talking to the coaches and they’re walking you through the truth on any given play. That blown block you’re killing the left tackle for on Twitter might be the result of a tight end blowing his assignment and failing to chip inside before he releases into a route. And that running back who keeps driving right into the scrum, much to your aggravation, may be doing so because his blockers couldn’t bust wet Kleenex.

Similarly, and perhaps most frequently, people will get the wrong idea about defensive coverage responsibilities and assign credit or blame to the wrong person. It’s hard enough to know which coverage you’re seeing at first sight, but there are enough books out there that will tell you how to tell the difference between Cover-1 and Cover-3. The real problem is being able to identify what really happened in a coverage scheme that takes up 25-30 total vertical yards when a.) you don’t know what the coaches want in the coverage; and b.) the television shot won’t even let you see what the safeties and deep corners are doing.

If it’s frustrating that you can’t discern such things, you’re not alone, and that’s not just a fan-centric issue. I discovered this while talking to Hugh Millen, the former NFL quarterback who now analyzes the Seahawks for KCPQ (television) and KJR (radio). The day after the Seahawks-Falcons game, he brought up to a group of reporters just how unhappy he was with the assessment of broadcaster Tim Ryan on the FOX telecast during one particular play. It was the touchdown pass from Matt Ryan to Michael Jenkins late in the first half (the highlight is here), and Ryan immediately took off on safety Kam Chancellor.

“Watch Michael Jenkins just go right through those two defenders,” Ryan said after the play. “I don’t know what Kam Chancellor’s doing – he’s got one thing he’s got to do, the rookie safety. Play your coverage! He bit up into no-man’s land!”

It’s an easy (if incorrect) assessment to make. Based on the formation (Fig. 1), it looks like Chancellor (31) comes up when he shouldn’t, leaving cornerback Kennard Cox (39) as the only defender on Jenkins. Though the pre-snap rotation in which defensive back Jordan Babineaux (27) rolled back and Chancellor moved up should have been a tip that the coverage was changing, Chancellor does look like the odd man out to the uneducated eye.

On Monday, I asked Millen to go through the play with me (I had the highly recommended NFL Game Rewind on my laptop in the Seahawks media room) and tell me what he saw. “It’s trips receivers to the left, back to the right,” he said. “I see a five-man rush, and when I see Jordan Babineaux backpedal to the deep middle, I know that Kam Chancellor can’t have safety help over the top – there just aren’t enough bodies. That tells me that Chancellor’s got to be an underneath curl/flat defender. Babineaux has deep middle, and that tells me that Kennard Cox has got to have deep responsibility.

“The only reason I made it a point to comment on the post-game show was that on the game telecast, Tim Ryan was ripping Kam Chancellor – just burying him. I looked at it a couple times, and I said, ‘That’s not how I see it.’ I think Tim Ryan misdiagnosed that coverage. I’m not interested in ripping on Kennard Cox, but I think it’s fair to absolve Kam Chancellor if he was doing his job – and he was. Babineaux was in deep middle, and (Chancellor) was in deep thirds. They’re ripping on Chancellor, when he’s got press/bail deep third-zone responsibility. So, that’s why I made the point.”

Millen confirmed the misdiagnosis very quickly during Pete Carroll’s press conference.

Millen: On the telecast, Tim Ryan said that Chancellor was a half-safety over the top…

Carroll: No, that’s not right. It was three-deep. He was hanging deep because of the down-and-distance situation, taking away the post (pattern) they like to run. So, that wasn’t right.

Boom. As simple as that.

Just to be clear about this, Tim Ryan is no Matt Millen – this isn’t a clueless hack in the booth. Ryan is one of the more intelligent ex-players currently opining on gameday. Even so, it just goes to show that it’s as true for the pros as it is for the fans. Unless you know what’s going on with the playbook on any given play, especially when it comes to coverages …

“You think you know, but you … don’t … know. And you … never … will.”