Why Pete Carroll wants Seahawks to run more. Not to tick you off. To help Russell Wilson
No, Pete Carroll isn’t just trying to tick you off.
It only seems like it.
The 69-year-old coach with ways many of his critics believe are 669 years old says his Seahawks need to do the opposite of chic football thinking next season.
They need to run the ball more.
Russell Wilson and Seattle’s previously record-setting deep passing game flattened late in the season and while getting dominated at home by the Los Angeles Rams in the first round of the NFC’s playoffs Saturday. Carroll believes that happened because defenses changed over the latter half of the season. They played more with two safeties deeper in coverage to prevent the Seahawks’ big pass plays.
The coach says his and his offense’s fatal flaw was not adjusting appropriately to take defenses out of their two-high-safety coverages.
That is, the Seahawks weren’t running the ball enough.
“We need to run more with focus and direction and count on it a little bit differently than we did,” Carroll said Monday.
“It isn’t going to be 50 runs a game. We’re not doing that. I don’t want to do that. I want to explode with a throwing game.
“But we need to dictate to the way we’re being played, and better, and see if we can do that.”
The 2020 Seahawks were tied for 19th in the 32-team NFL in rushing attempts with 411 (that’s 25.7 carries per game). That included 83 rushes by Wilson; 53 of those were scrambles by the quarterback getting pressured on pass plays called by offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer. Take out the scrambles, Schottenheimer called 358 run plays this season. That would have been the third-fewest rushing attempts in the league in 2020.
Of course, take out Wilson’s scrambles and Seattle is back to something more like Charlie Whitehurst at QB.
Nobody, not even Carroll’s harshest critics, want that.
The Seahawks were third in the NFL is rush attempts in 2019, with 481. They were second in 2018 (534). The back-to-back seasons Seattle went to the Super Bowl, in 2013 and ‘14, the team was second and second again in the league in times running the ball. That was when the Seahawks were dominant defensively, as they were for the final seven games of 2020 (a league-low 15 points per game allowed in that span).
Besides this year, the 2016 and ‘17 seasons are the only ones in the last eight years that Seattle has not been in the top three in the NFL in rush attempts under Carroll. That ‘17 season is the only one in the last nine years the Seahawks didn’t make the playoffs.
That’s what Carroll knows. It’s how he wants to play. He’s convinced it’s the way the Seahawks could have solved the riddle they never did in December and in Saturday’s playoff loss: how to counter defenses’ move to two safeties playing doubly deeper coverage to take away the home-run balls to DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett?
Those had Wilson an NFL MVP front-runner the first two months of the 2020 season. But opponents from the New York Giants (who held Seattle to 12 points in winning in early December) and after went with two-high safeties, two cornerbacks on the shorter, outside routes and often extra defensive backs inside.
“Frankly, I’d like to not play against two-deep looks next year, all season long,” Carroll said.
By late in the year, opposing cornerbacks were so helped by safeties on deep passes they got emboldened to play Metcalf and Lockett tightly on the line. Knowing he had safety help behind him, Rams’ cornerback Darious Williams jumped into the backfield on Saturday on a wide-receiver screen Wilson threw to Metcalf. Williams easily intercepted the pass for a game-breaking touchdown. It was Williams’ third interception of Wilson in three games this season.
The Seahawks’ answer was to keep throwing long.
Wilson kept holding onto the ball, waiting for receivers to break open like they were in September and October. They didn’t. He got sacked 48 times in 16 games. Seattle had the third-most sacks allowed in the league (again).
Saturday while losing to Los Angeles, Wilson completed just nine of his first 23 throws. He finished with 11 completions — his fewest since Dec. 10, 2018, when he had 10 against Minnesota. His 174 yards passing Saturday were his second-lowest of the season, and third-lowest he’s had in 16 career playoff starts.
Not only does Carroll think the Seahawks did not adjust well enough and run enough to counter the deep coverages they faced late in the season, they didn’t have Wilson throw it enough underneath all the deep coverage. Of Wilson’s 27 pass attempts against the Rams Saturday, only three were completions for gains of 10-19 yards.
Essentially the Seahawks each week late this season were trying to cram square pegs into round holes in the passing game.
Carroll says that’s not a Wilson thing.
“It’s really a football thing. It’s a scheme thing,” the coach said.
“I want to see if we can run the ball more effectively to focus the play of the opponents and see if we can force them to do things like we’d like them to do more — like we have been able to do that in the past.”
That means, single-high safety coverage in the middle of the field. Those are looks Seattle got more in September and October, after years of being in the top three in rushing attempts in the league. In single-high coverage, strong safeties play more like linebackers, nearer the line of scrimmage to stop the Seahawks from running.
Wilson bombed all over that. He was on a pace that was challenging Peyton Manning’s league record for most touchdown passes early in the season. Metcalf was leading the NFL in yards receiving against all the single-high safety coverage.
Carroll wants more running to get defenses to do more of that—and far less of what they did in December and last weekend for which the Seahawks did not counter.
“We have to be able to get that done, it’s not just the running game,” Carroll said. “It is the style of passes that will help us some. ... In last four or five games, it became really obvious. And remember, I don’t mind winning 20-9. I don’t mind winning 17-14, you know. I want to win controlling the game.”
No adaptation
That isn’t new.
Carrroll has said since November the Seahawks’ offense needed to “adapt” better. He said again Dec. 8, after Wilson got sacked and battered by the Giants in a crummy, 17-12 loss to a four-win team, that the Seahawks needed to be more balanced with more running.
After Saturday’s loss Wilson said he wanted the offense to play at a fast pace more often. That usually means no-huddle plays. Those are more off-script. The quarterback calls those hurry-up plays on the fly more than Schottenheimer does.
“Early in the season we were able to get the deep shots and stuff like that early on,” Wilson said. “I think that, as well, our tempo, our pace and stuff, getting in and out and all that, we kind of lost that a little bit, I think, along the way.
“I think that’s something that we do really, really well.”
Asked if the offense adjusted well enough late in the season to what defenses were taking away, Wilson said: “That’s a good question.”
So are these: Who failed to adapt? Whose responsibility was it counter the defenses’ counter to the Seahawks’ deep-passing game?
Schottenheimer’s the play caller. He designs each game plan.
But Carroll has ultimate authority, not just on his coaching staff but on every football decision in the franchise. His authority as executive vice president exceeds general manager John Schneider, whom the Seahawks hired after Carroll in 2010.
Who’s responsibility was it to make the adjustments that never happened?
“I take responsibility for that,” Carroll said.
“We needed to shift gears more abruptly. We know the potential that we have in exploding and getting the ball down the field.”
He could have ordered Schottenheimer to back off the deep balls, to run more, to stress Wilson throwing the ball more quickly to shorter routes. Carroll says it’s on him that the Seahawks didn’t do enough of any of that to advance beyond the wild-card round.
This is the sixth consecutive season the Seahawks haven’t gone past the divisional round of the playoffs. The last time they did was when they played in Super Bowl 49. That was at the end of the 2015 season.
“We just wanted to keep thinking that we could get back to it because it’s such a big part of our attack. Russ is so good at throwing the ball down the field,” Carroll said. “I felt that we lingered in that kind of the glow of the first half of the season, as we needed to adjust a little bit. And we didn’t. We didn’t do it well enough, fast enough. ...
“You have to make sure you don’t get stuck. ... We weighted ourselves out of balance early in the year. It was so attractive throwing the football, because Russ was 75% (on completions) and we were rollin’ and we’re scoring tons of points and it was fun. We liked it and we got lured into it a little bit. ...
“We never got as balanced as we needed to be.”
Changes?
Schottenheimer has been reported to be under consideration for head-coaching vacancies with the New York Jets, for whom he’s been offensive coordinator, and the Houston Texas. League sources tell The News Tribune the Texans’ supposed interest might be more media-created than real.
Schottenheimer last week again declined to say whether he has interviewed, remotely via Zoom or otherwise, with any other team recently. He’s said he’s been focused on each week’s Seahawks opponent.
Monday, Carroll was asked if he anticipated any changes among his coordinators. That is Schottenheimer on offense, Ken Norton Jr. on defense and Larry Izzo on special-teams. Izzo replaced Brian Schneider following Schneider’s personal leave during this season.
“I don’t talk about stuff like that,” Carroll said. “It’s disrespectful for me to even address those questions.
“We’re going to figure out what we need to do to get better, just like we always do. I love my guys. I love the way they’ve worked and dedication and all that they’ve brought.
“I’m counting on everybody coming back. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
A half hour earlier Monday, on his weekly show with Seattle’s KIRO-AM radio, Carroll was asked specifically if he expects Schottenheimer to return the Seahawks’ play caller for a fourth season in 2021.
“Yes,” Carroll said. “We scored more points than any team in the history of the franchise.”
This story was originally published January 11, 2021 at 2:55 PM.
