Pete Carroll’s interest in Kirby Wilson as Seahawks’ new OC may go beyond running the ball
The latest name among the candidates to become the Seahawks’ new offensive coordinator is getting attention because of his deep roots in the running game.
But Pete Carroll could be targeting Las Vegas Raiders running backs coach Kirby Wilson for another reason.
Trust. To be a sounding board Carroll’s lacked on his staff the last two seasons.
The Seahawks’ interest interviewing Wilson for the play-calling job was first reported Wednesday by Ian Rapoport of NFL Network.
One of the more interesting things Carroll said while assessing the 2020 season two days after Seattle’s home loss to the Los Angeles Rams in the first round of the playoffs was that he misses having an assistant he can count on to talk frankly to him.
Carroll, 69, is also the team’s executive vice president and highest football authority, ultimately above general manager John Schneider. Carroll feels he needs someone on his staff to speak freely to him, to tell Carroll when he’s wrong. To be the check-and-balance guy to Carroll on his staff that Carroll was to Brian Schottenheimer.
Carroll spoke frankly to Schottenheimer, all right. Carroll fired his play caller two weeks ago, after three seasons, because of what the team called “philosophical differences.”
Carroll’s sounding-board man for eight years in Seattle through the end of the 2018 season was Carl “Tater” Smith. Russell Wilson’s former quarterback coach, who is four years older than Carroll, left the Seahawks following the ‘18 season. Seahawks wide receiver coach Dave Canales became Wilson’s position coach after Smith. Smith was a consultant with the Houston Texans in 2020.
“I always need more help, you know. I need to be coached up just like everybody else,” Carroll said. “Over the years I have lost a couple guys that have been (that for me). Carl Smith was a guy that was…’Tater’ would tell me anything. He was awesome. And I demanded it of him because he knew the truth, and he needed to speak it to me.
“So I have lost a few guys like that, and it is something I’m looking at.”
That may be why he’s looking at Kirby Wilson.
Carroll hired the 59-year-old Los Angeles native in 1997 to be his running backs coach for Carroll’s first season as the coach of the New England Patriots. That was after the Patriots traded Super Bowl coach Bill Parcells to the Jets.
Wilson stayed with Carroll for all three of his seasons leading the Patriots. New England owner Robert Kraft fired Carroll and his staff following the 1999 season.
Carroll then spent his only year out of football in the last half century, 2000, reassessing his personal philosophies and internalizing legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden’s “Pyramid of Success.”
In 2001, USC hired Carroll to revive its storied college program. Carroll hired Wilson again, to be his wide receivers coach on his first Trojans staff.
So Carroll’s trust in Wilson goes back at least 24 years. He had no such bond with any of his previous play callers.
This will be the fourth offensive coordinator Carroll’s had in his 11 years leading the Seahawks. The other three—Jeremy Bates (2010), Darrell Bevell (2011-17) and Schottenheimer (2018-20)—had a combined total of one previous year working with Carroll before he brought them to Seattle.
That was Bates’ one year as Carroll’s quarterbacks coach at USC, in 2009. Carroll then brought Bates with him onto his first Seahawks staff.
Football reasons
Beyond the trust factor, Carroll has football reasons to be interested in Wilson.
Carroll made it clear in November and December while Russell Wilson and his previously soaring, deep-passing offense slumped, and again after Wilson’s season-low 11 completions in the playoff loss to the Rams: he wants to run the ball more, and better. That’s to force defenses out of the coverages with two safeties deep foes used to shut down Schottenheimer’s long-ball offense in the latter half of the 2020 season.
“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,” Carroll said this month.
That means single-high safety coverage in the middle of the field. Seattle got those looks 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 better stop the Seahawks from running.
Wilson bombed all over that in the first half of the 2020 season. He was on a pace that was challenging Peyton Manning’s league record for most touchdown passes. Wilson finished the season with 40 TD throws, the most in Seahawks history.
Carroll wants more running to get defenses to do more single-high-safety coverage, and thus Wilson to throw more easily.
“We have to be able to get that done,” Carroll said. “It’s not just the running game. 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.”
Kirby Wilson wants to control games with the run.
It’s all he’s coached in the NFL.
“He has a pretty good pedigree with running backs and running games, if that’s what Pete Carroll wants,” a league source familiar with Wilson and the Raiders told The News Tribune Wednesday.
“He has no experience with the passing game. He’s a big smash-mouth guy in terms of running the ball.”
Wilson’s ties
One of the interesting points of Wilson’s ties to running backs and the running game is he’s never had top play-calling authority for a team. And he wasn’t a running back but a wide receiver in college at the University of Illinois in 1982, then a defensive back and kick returner for the Canadian Football League’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers in 1983 and Toronto Argonauts in ‘84.
Wilson was the position coach in New England for future Hall of Fame running back Curtis Martin, who left the Patriots after Carroll’s first season in New England in ‘97. Carroll has since called it his biggest regret from his short, three-season tenure that he did not fight harder to keep Martin from leaving as a restricted free agent.
“Personally, it was devastating,” Wilson told ESPN in 2015. “You’re talking about a Pro Bowl player and a great player in his prime, and so that was tough.”
Martin was just one of the numerous legendary rushers Wilson has coached since entering the NFL. Jon Gruden hired him to his first Tampa Bay Buccaneers staff that won the Super Bowl 18 years ago. That’s the connection that led Wilson back to Gruden in 2019 to be his running backs coach again, with the Raiders.
Wilson coached Emmitt Smith in the Hall of Famer’s final NFL season in 2004 with the Arizona Cardinals. Wilson won his second Super Bowl as an assistant coach leading the relatively anonymous running backs (Willie Parker, Mewelde Moore) for the 2007 Pittsburgh Steelers. He coached Le’Veon Bell when Bell was a rookie with the Steelers in 2013. Pittsburgh was his longest NFL stop, six years.
Wilson also coached Adrian Peterson with the Minnesota Vikings.
He also knows some of the worst of the NFL. He was the running backs coach for the 0-16 Cleveland Browns in 2017. He also had the title of run-game coordinator with the 2016 and ‘17 Browns.
Another aspect of Wilson’s coaching that Carroll has liked in the past, and may seek to return to in 2021: using an NFL relic in these passing days.
A fullback.
Alec Ingold has played 20% of the Raiders’ offensive snaps in his two seasons with the team and with Wilson coaching him as the fullback in Gruden’s offense.
Nick Bellore is listed as a fullback on Seattle’s roster. But he’s a special-teams player. That’s why he made the Pro Bowl for the first time this season. In Bellore’s two seasons with the Seahawks, the former linebacker has played just 3% of the team’s snaps on offense.
Carroll hasn’t had a fullback get as much as 20% of snaps since Michael Robinson played 32% of the time in 2012. Wil Tukuafu came closest with 19% in 2015.
With Wilson coaching him, Ingold played 22 of the Raiders’ 70 offensive snaps (31%) in their best win of the 2020 season. That was on Oct. 11 when they beat the previously unbeaten and the defending Super Bowl-champion Chiefs in Kansas City.
The Raiders closed out that upset by running lead back Josh Jacobs four consecutive times to begin their final drive that took the final 3:55 off the clock in a one-score game.
“That’s always the ultimate goal, closing the game in victory formation,” Wilson told reporters in the days following that game.
Closing games with 4-minute drives running the ball is a particular love of Carroll’s.
“Quite frankly, a lot of running backs don’t know how to run behind a fullback,” Wilson said in mid-October. “That’s not the case here in Las Vegas.”
A fullback could be part of Carroll’s re-emphasis on the run in 2021.
Another reason Carroll wants to talk (again) with Kirby Wilson.
This story was originally published January 21, 2021 at 7:24 AM.
