Seahawks re-signing Bryan Mone, part of Pete Carroll basing defense on stopping the run

They are changing coaches and coverages, blitzes and blitzers with new edge rushers and schemes outside.

But first and fundamentally, Pete Carroll intends to improve recently-slipping Seahawks defense by basing it inside, on tackles stopping the run.

It’s the same way he built Seattle into a Super Bowl champion a decade ago.

That’s why the team is re-signing Bryan Mone, after doing the same with Poona Ford and Al Woods.

Mone is getting a two-year, $12 million extension to stay under contract with the Seahawks through the 2024 season, NFL Network and ESPN first reported Monday.

“We have a really significant group of guys that play inside with Al and Poona and Mone,” Carroll said in March. “Those guys are really significant players in stopping the run and bottling up the middle.”

The 26-year-old Mone has played in 28 games primarily as a nose tackle over the opposing center in the middle of Seattle’s defense the last three seasons. He made five starts from the Seahawks last season. The team signed him in 2019 as a rookie undrafted free agent from Michigan.

The Seahawks decided this offseason to tender him an offer for 2022 as an exclusive-rights free agent. His salary for this year is $965,000.

This new agreement adds two seasons and $12 million to that, and keeps Mone with Ford and Al Woods as the Seattle’s primary run-stopping tackles inside the team’s new 3-4 defense for 2022.

Woods is coming off a resurgent year that earned him a two-year, $9 million deal this offseason, through 2023.

Ford re-signed in March 2021 for two years and $12.3 million with incentives that could push his total pay to $14 million. Undrafted in 2018 out of Texas, Ford has the Seahawks’ highest salary-cap charge for this year at $10,075,000.

The Seahawks also have veteran defensive tackle Shelby Harris. They added him as part of the big trade of Russell Wilson to the Denver Broncos in March. Harris, though, is more of a “three-technique” tackle, an outside player in the guard-tackle gap than the nose tackle Mone and Ford have been for Seattle.

Harris could have a role like Woods. Woods excelled last season when the Seahawks moved him around their line, more outside shoulder of guards and even sometimes outside tackle near tight ends, than in his previous nose-tackle role over the center.

The Seahawks, Carroll’s and new coordinator Clint Hurtt’s switch from a 4-3, with four defensive linemen, to more 3-4 schemes this year makes the lone inside tackle on the nose more central to the team’s run defense.

How effective Ford and Mone are stopping centers and guards from opening running lanes and blocking inside linebackers Jordyn Brooks and Cody Barton largely will determine how much Seattle improves from 31st in total defense last season.