Pete Carroll says Seahawks shredded defense’s many problems aren’t coaching, it’s playing
Pete Carroll reviewed all the film. He broke down all the breakdowns.
He assessed what went wrong in the Seahawks’ debacle on defense at Buffalo Sunday. The NFL’s last-ranked unit (456 yards against per game) allowed 459 more yards and 44 more points in a 10-point loss. It was the most points they’d allowed since Carroll became their coach a decade ago.
Carroll’s conclusion from the Buffalo blowout isn’t likely to be popular across the Northwest.
It’s not criticized coordinator Ken Norton Jr., who runs the defense and plays the players Carroll tells him. It’s not the coaching.
It’s the playing.
“We came out just not executing,” Carroll said Monday, six days before his NFC West-leading team (6-2) plays at the division-rival Los Angeles Rams (5-3).
“Some really basic stuff that we needed to do (we didn’t do).”
Buffalo’s Josh Allen threw for 415 yards on Sunday, above Seattle’s average allowed of 362 per game. His receivers often had acres of turf before and after their catches, with Seahawks defenders often five or even 10 yards away.
The Bills led 14-0 before Russell Wilson and Seattle’s offense ran its fourth play of the game. Allen completed passes to eight different receivers—in the first quarter. It was 17-0 and 24-7 before halftime. That’s when Allen had completed 24 of 28, mostly easy passes for 282 yards and three touchdowns. By the second quarter, Buffalo’s quarterback surpassed his average yards passing for an entire game.
The Seahawks didn’t look ready. They didn’t look good.
They didn’t look, well, coached.
Carroll says they were.
“Things that we had practiced, we didn’t execute in the game,” Carroll said. “And so, real disappointed in that, because generally that’s not the case.”
But Sunday’s result wasn’t new.
Allen became the third quarterback to throw for more than 400 yards this season against Seattle. The most yards passing allowed in a game in franchise history has come this season: 472 by Dallas’ Dak Prescott, in week three.
New England’s Cam Newton threw for 397 yards in Seattle’s home win in week 2.
The Seahawks allowed 397 or more yards passing four times in the previous three seasons combined.
“We’ve got to clean up what’s going on on the back end, and make sure we are not giving up plays,” Carroll said.
The defense’s problems, this first-place team’s potentially fatal flaws, leave Wilson and the offense having to be prolific, if not perfect.
In each of its two defeats this season, Seattle has scored 34 points. It’s another damning fact for the Seahawks’ defense.
“We’ve just got to be better,” All-Pro safety Jamal Adams said after the loss at Buffalo, his first start in five games because of a strained groin.
“We just had a lot of mistakes, and came out flat.
“We can’t keep giving up points and all these yards.”
On Dunbar
Cornerback Quinton Dunbar didn’t only look bad in Buffalo. He felt bad.
Carroll said Sunday following the loss Dunbar was hobbled by a knee issue that the coach described Monday as “chronic.” He played because Pro Bowl cornerback Shaquill Griffin could not, for the second consecutive game, because of a strained hamstring.
The upshot in Buffalo was Dunbar had to play injured, and got caught some compensating for not being able to run and move as well by dropping way off Bills receivers before the Seahawks finally replaced him with never-used cornerback Linden Stephens in the fourth quarter.
Multiple times, Dunbar lined up 10 or more yards off Buffalo receivers before the snap, including on third downs with fewer than 10 yards to go for the Bills first down. Allen and receivers gladly took all that space for conversions.
“We backed off more than we should have, a few times, and we were deeper than we should have been,” Carroll said. “Those are really just technique principles.”
Carroll said Dunbar “really is a guy who plays on feel and a different style than just a straight, on-the-line-of-scrimmage press guy. That’s not been the way he plays.
“So as we learn him and adapt (to) him we are trying to figure out how to best position him.
“Sometimes, he is coming up with some stuff that it’s farther off than we would see fit.”
Carroll said opposite cornerback Tre Flowers had perhaps his best game in three seasons at Buffalo. He blitzed, and broke up a pass down the field in coverage.
Flowers could challenge Dunbar for his starting job back once Griffin returns, though, again, it does not appear right now that Griffin will play Sunday against the Rams.
Dunbar has not been what the Seahawks traded for this spring. They thought they were getting more of a lock-down cover man coming off a career year in Washington, who could replace 2018 and ‘19 starter Tre Flowers to sure up coverage.
“Yeah, it was a hard game (Sunday) for Quinton,” Carroll said. “Ball kept coming his way. He had trouble getting where he needed to get to on a couple things.
“It was a hard game on him, just physically.”
Carroll mentioned how the team is limiting Dunbar’s practicing each week to manage his knee injury.
“It’s just been a chronic thing for him.”
Carroll said nickel defensive back Ugo Amadi is going to try to practice Wednesday. He’s missed the last two games with a strained hamstring. Amadi can also play cornerback but at 5 feet 9 is about four inches shorter than Carroll wants outside at corner.
The coach said Griffin is further behind Amadi in his return to practicing.
The Adams factor
Carroll said the defense is now turning up pressure because “we are playing to guys’ strengths.”
That’s particularly true with Adams.
With Adams playing, the Seahawks have been blitzing earlier and more often in games. They blitzed Adams, linebackers Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright, nickel defensive backs, cornerback Tre Flowers—just far more aggressive.
The Seahawks had seven sacks of Allen Sunday. That was more than half their season total (12) coming into Buffalo. Ten of Seattle’s 19 sacks this season have come in the last two games.
In their previous game before Buffalo, their win over San Francisco, the Seahawks blitzed Wagner in particular more. That was after Carroll said he erred in not blitzing Arizona’s Kyler Murray more in Seattle’s loss at the Cardinals.
The Seahawks dominated immobile 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. He left that Seattle win after three quarters with a recurrence of his high-ankle sprain and his now on injured reserve.
“We would like to be aggressive,” Carroll said. “We started out the season being aggressive and getting after it, and we in the last couple weeks we’ve turned our focus back to that somewhat, in an attempt to get some heat on the quarterback. ...
“We’re moving in the right direction in terms of that.
“We’ve got to make sure we are complimenting that, on the back end. We continue to give up stuff that we just don’t need to give up. There’s just too many plays that have gotten away from us, and some of it has been execution. Just, we made a couple errors (in Buffalo), and they were big plays.
“It’s been a challenge. And it’s been frustrating, because we feel like we can do much more than we are doing right now. ...It’s all about the throwing game, and we’ve got to make sure that we are taking care of business.”
The coach said pressuring quarterbacks with additional blitzes is becoming an asset for the defense, but that the coverage “has to play off that.”
Without Adams, Carroll has chosen to drop his linebackers and safeties deep into coverage to prevent big plays over the top.
Adams didn’t start off blitzing Sunday in his return from six weeks out. And then when he began to in the first half, a Bills offensive tackle was waiting for him and stonewalled him at the line.
Adams finished with 1 1/2 sacks, three hits on Allen and one tackle for loss. He also gave up a couple big plays in coverage he admitted he’d like to have back, including the illegal-contact penalty and first down for pushing Buffalo receiver Cole Beasley down. That came while Seattle’s Ryan Neal was sacking Allen on third down near midfield early in the fourth quarter of a then-one-score game.
“He’s really a factor,” Carroll said of Adams being back. “We’ve just got to keep putting him in the right spots and cutting him loose.”
But blitzing has it’s risks. They are why defenses don’t do it on every down.
The Seahawks have allowed 28 plays of 20 or more yards in the four games Adams has started this season. They’ve allowed 12 plays of 20 or more yards in the four games Adams did not play—and two of those big plays were runs by Minnesota when the Vikings rushed for 201 yards on Seattle in week five.
Is Adams’ best of many brilliant skills, blitzing through the line of scrimmage, exposing a back-end secondary that is already having its own problems with fundamentals of pass coverage?
“Whenever you play as aggressive a style as we were playing in the second half (Sunday), you can get exposed,” Carroll said. “You have to overcome it, mix your calls and make sure that you try to stay one step ahead of it.
“I don’t think it has to do with Jamal. ...I’ll tell you in a couple weeks more how to answer that.”
