So, just who does what between Pete Carroll and Ken Norton Jr. coaching Seahawks’ defense?
The Seahawks were back in it.
Their last-ranked defense had largely overcome itself to have the Buffalo Bills backed up in a third and 16 on the fringes of field-goal range. Seattle had rallied from a 24-7 hole to within 27-20 early in the fourth quarter last weekend.
“We had a chance,” quarterback Russell Wilson said after the game, “despite it all.”
Then, they didn’t.
Coach Pete Carroll told defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. to call an eight-man blitz on the third and 16. The Bills made a perfect call against it: a quick wide-receiver screen. Five Buffalo blockers were against two Seahawks, hobbled cornerback Quinton Dunbar and nickel D.J. Reed.
Wide receiver John Brown ran 33 yards behind that unchallenged wall, to the Seattle 2-yard line. Buffalo then scored the touchdown that put it back up two scores. Game essentially over.
“I made, contributed, a call that they hit the screen on,” Carroll said after the 44-34 loss, the most points allowed by one of his Seahawks defenses.
“So all the calls didn’t work out quite right, as it happens sometimes.”
How many times is Carroll involved in Norton’s play calls during games?
“For years. For years I’ve been involved,” Carroll said. “There’s no how many. I don’t know how many. It’s just whenever, you know. It’s an ongoing conversation.
“I’ve been doing that for years.”
For some, that was a revelation.
For those on the Seahawks’ defense since Carroll became the head coach in 2010, it’s a way of life.
There is civic outrage across the Northwest. Many are calling for Norton to be fired. That belief is that the coordinator must be the reason Seattle (6-2) is entering its NFC West game Sunday at the Los Angeles Rams (5-3) ranked 32nd in the NFL in total defense, 32nd in pass defense, 30th in points allowed and having given up the most yards (3,646) through eight games in league history—by a lot.
Besides, it’s easier to scapegoat one coordinator than 11 players on the entire defense. It’s not as easy to replace all the players at once in the middle of a season.
But make no mistake: this is Carroll’s defense.
These are his schemes. His game plans. His players.
And his players are either hurt or ineffective. Or, in the case of starting cornerback Quinton Dunbar, hurt AND ineffective.
It’s ultimately Carroll’s defense to improve.
The News Tribune asked Norton on Wednesday to detail the responsibilities between him and Carroll on game planning during the week, and on play calls during games.
“As far as the game plan goes, it’s a collaboration,” Norton said. “We all sit down and watch the film. We talk through all the stats, and watch through everything that we do as far as the game plan. We look through all the games (films), and things like that. The entire staff sits down and talks through all the different things that we think that we can do.
“As far as calling the plays, I’m the initial caller. Coach is the boss.
“And he always has certain things that he wants me to call.”
If Dan Quinn or Wade Phillips—or heck, Chuck Knox—were Seattle’s coordinator right now, it would still be Carroll’s defense. And they’d still have the same hurt, ineffective players playing on it.
Put another way: if Norton had been the defensive coordinator when Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor, Bobby Wagner, K.J. Wright, Bruce Irvin, Cliff Avril, Michael Bennett and Brandon Mebane were all in their primes, the Seahawks would still have gone to consecutive Super Bowls and won their only NFL championship.
Loyalty
Norton has been coaching for Carroll since 2004. That year, Carroll hired the former three-time Super Bowl-winning, All-Pro linebacker from the 1990s to be his linebackers coach at USC. When Carroll got the Seahawks’ head job in 2010, he brought Norton to his first NFL coaching job as Seattle’s linebackers coach.
Carroll and general manager John Schneider drafted K.J. Wright, Bobby Wagner and Bruce Irvin. Norton was their position coach as they and the Seahawks became Super Bowl champions in the 2013 season. Norton left following the 2014 season and Seattle’s second consecutive Super Bowl appearance, to be the Oakland Raiders’ defensive coordinator.
In Norton’s three seasons leading Oakland’s defense the Raiders were 22nd, 26th and 23rd in total defense in the NFL.
Carroll hired Norton back following the 2017 season, to replace Kris Richard as the Seahawks’ defensive coordinator. Carroll fired Richard after Seattle went from first in the league in points allowed in 2015 to third and then 13th in Richard’s coordinator tenure.
Norton returned as Carroll and Schneider were starting a remake of Seattle’s once-dominant defense. The Legion of Boom got older, injured and more expensive. The Seahawks let Sherman and Thomas sign elsewhere after major injuries. Chancellor retired after a serious neck injury. Avril retired because of a neck injury. They traded Bennett. Mebane left in free agency.
Players play
Since 2017, the year before Norton returned and became coordinator, Carroll and Schneider have chosen to replace those departed stars with these their top pass-rusher draft picks each year:
- Malik McDowell, 2017
- Rasheem Green, 2018
- L.J. Collier, 2019
- Darryl Taylor, 2020
Um...
McDowell never played, for the Seahawks or anyone. He had an ATV accident and serious head injuries months before his rookie training camp in 2017.
Green did next to nothing as a rookie the following year. He had four sacks last season to lead a defense that finished 31st in sacks in the NFL. Green played in this season’s opener at Atlanta, got a nerve injury in his neck, and returned to play for the first time in almost two months last weekend.
Collier is still on the team. Really. It’s just tough to notice. He had a lost, basically redshirt season of 2019. He got a badly sprained foot and ankle early in training camp last year, then was a scratch on five game days when he was finally healthy. The defensive end has one career sack. He’s played 51% of snaps this season.
Taylor has played in as many NFL games as you have. He’s yet to practice since the Seahawks drafted him in the second round in April. He had a leg surgery in late January from which the team’s medical staff thought he’d have recovered long ago.
The net production so far of those last four top defensive picks, all pass rushers: six career sacks—and two guys who have never played in the league.
That’s on Carroll and Schneider, not Norton.
Carroll is not going to fire a trusted, loyal deputy he’s hired three different times in two levels of football in the middle of a season. Not when the Seahawks are 6-2 and leading their division.
Now if this continues, Carroll may be compelled to make a change—after the season. He did it with Richard, who was also an assistant of his at USC. He did it after the 2017 season with Darrell Bevell. Carroll fired him his Seahawks offensive coordinator after seven seasons and replaced him in 2018 with Brian Schottenheimer.
If this defense continues on its current path, the Seahawks aren’t going to the Super Bowl.
Carroll isn’t expecting that to happen.
But first, he needs players executing better. And he needs those players to be healthier. Seattle has used six different combinations of starting defensive backs in eight games. All-Pro safety Jamal Adams, their prized offseason acquisition, has played in only four games because of a strained groin.
It was telling in Buffalo that when the fiery Adams was shouting and wanting more from and in the defense, he was barking at Carroll in front of Seattle’s bench, not Norton.
Adams said this week on his 17 Weeks podcast on SiriusXM radio’s Uninterrupted he wasn’t yelling at Carroll but was telling the head coach: “’Let me loose. Keep feeding me.’ I told him I’m my lion. That’s what I told him.
“So he was smiling under his mask. I can see him smiling, but he was like, ‘Calm down, calm down.’”
The Rams, the Cardinals who have already beaten them waiting to play them next Thursday and the rest of the NFL aren’t waiting or feeling sorry for the Seahawks.
“We just have to keep coming together and get this thing really cleaned up,” Carroll said. “Unfortunately, the continuity has not been a positive factor for us yet. Hopefully we can find a way to fit together and get our new guys in there and get them playing really well and error-free, to their nature, and utilize their talents and all that, and we’ll see a turn.
“This is the halfway point and this is a marker. I would really like to see us turn it. You’ve seen us already adjust some in how we’re doing calls and stuff. We’re just trying to fit it together to maximize our guys.
“But I really can’t tell you what the adjustment are going to be this time around (at Los Angeles Sunday). Got to see how they want to play. But we’re on defense. That’s what this is. They get to call the plays and we react to them.
“So, we’ve got to do better.”
This story was originally published November 12, 2020 at 9:16 AM.
