Sources: Seahawks expected to promote D-line coach Clint Hurtt to defensive coordinator
Pete Carroll is going back to his proven way to remake his Seahawks defense.
Hire an assistant he knows and trusts from leading the front seven to be his defensive coordinator.
League sources confirmed to The News Tribune Friday afternoon the Seahawks are expected to promote defensive line coach Clint Hurtt to defensive coordinator. Hurtt, 43, will replace Ken Norton Jr., whom Carroll fired last month following Seattle’s 7-10 season.
The team is likely to announce Hurtt’s promotion to coordinator within days.
Hurtt is the most senior member of the Seahawks’ defensive staff. Carroll gave Hurtt the additional title of assistant head coach to get him to Seattle in 2017. He had been the Chicago Bears’ outside linebacker coach.
His promotion follows what Carroll did in his first change at defensive coordinator as Seahawks head coach. In 2013, Carroll brought back one-time Seattle defensive line coach Dan Quinn to replace Gus Bradley as Seahawks defensive coordinator. That was after Bradley got his first head-coaching job, for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Quinn left following the Seahawks’ 2014 Super Bowl season to become head coach of the Atlanta Falcons. Carroll replaced him with Seattle defensive backs coach Kris Richard.
In 2018, Carroll wasn’t happy with Richard’s work leading a defense Carroll was remaking post-Legion of Boom. He replaced Richard at coordinator with Ken Norton Jr., the former Seahawks and USC linebackers coach for Carroll who had developed Bobby Wagner into an All-Pro.
Now it’s Hurtt replacing Norton.
Hurtt is in the mold of Quinn: a younger D-line coach with charisma and enthusiasm Seahawks players love. He relates personally with his players on matters in and out of football. He is often seen laughing with his linemen but also barking at them and intricately involved with them in practices and games.
Hurtt’s immediate task: create a better, more consistent pass rush to force opposing quarterbacks into more turnovers and lessen how long Seattle’s secondary has to cover receivers.
Carroll wants the 2022 Seahawks defense to be more aggressive, to dictate more to offenses. The 70-year-old defensive-minded head coach wants to end the soft, two-high-safety coverage he and Norton used for too much of the 2021 season because they felt the Seahawks had to.
The coaches didn’t trust their revolving cast of new cornerbacks. Until strong safety Jamal Adams got a season-ending shoulder injury in early December, the Seahawks blitzed him far less in 2021 than 2020. Carroll and Norton felt they needed to keep Adams and Pro Bowl free safety Diggs as guards over the top, behind those iffy cornerbacks, to prevent the huge pass plays the Seahawks allowed for the first halves of the 2020 and ‘21 seasons.
The last two seasons began with Seattle on NFL-record paces for yards allowed, lacking a pass rush other than Adams’ blitzing.
Donatell, Hurtt reunite
Hurtt was the lone internal known candidate among former Denver Broncos defensive coordinator Ed Donatell, Chicago Bears defensive coordinator Sean Desai and Dallas Cowboys defensive passing game coordinator and secondary coach Joe Whitt Jr.
Donatell, 65, a long-time friend who has coached on the same staffs with Carroll prior to Carroll leading the Seahawks, is expected to become a senior assistant on Seattle’s defensive staff. That became known earlier Friday. Donatell not taking the defensive coordinator job to join Carroll in Seattle cleared the way for Hurtt’s promotion.
Hurtt and Donatell worked on the same defensive staff for the Chicago Bears in 2015 and ‘16. Hurtt was Chicago’s outside linebackers coach then while Donatell was the Bears’ defensive backs coach.
Seattle has a vacancy at defensive backs coach. Carroll fired Andre Curtis from that job the same day he fired Norton, Jan. 18.
Donatell and Hurtt have coached under Vic Fangio, Denver’s head coach since 2019. Fangio’s and Donatell’s defenses use two-high coverage, with two safeties deep in the middle of the field, as their base. But their schemes are known for tricky variations and disguised looks to confuse offenses.
At Seattle’s Super Bowl best in the 2013 and ‘14 seasons and for years after when the Seahawks still had Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor and Richard Sherman in their secondary, Carroll featured Cover 3 zone concepts, which Fangio and Donatell also use. That is, with a strong safety playing closer to the line of scrimmage to defend the run and short passes. The free safety is back with both cornerbacks in three-deep coverage over thirds of the field.
Carroll has used more two-high coverage in 2020 and ‘21, out of necessity with Adams injured and a lack of trust in the revolving cast of eight cornerbacks Seattle played this past season. The defense worked in not giving up points; the last-place Seahawks were 11th in the league in points allowed. But it failed to get the ball back to Russell Wilson and the needy offense.
Seattle was 28th in yards allowed. Most damning, the defense produced just 18 turnovers in 17 games, the stat Carroll believes is the sport’s most important.
Not only was that the fewest takeaways for a Carroll defense in Seattle, it was the fewest turnovers produced in a season in the Seahawks’ 46-year history.
When the Seahawks won the Super Bowl at the end of the 2013 season and made it to another Super Bowl the following season, they had a league-high 39 then 24 takeaways.
The biggest difference: their pass rush.
More heat
Those Seattle Super Bowl teams were so deep with sack-and-pressure defensive linemen that Michael Bennett and Cliff Avril were reserves. Carroll and his coaches made hockey-like line changes of pass rushers, 10 deep, throughout games. By the fourth quarter, offensive lines were often exhausted trying to block fresh, rotating defensive linemen.
Seattle won close games late with its defense. Those Legion of Boom Seahawks secondaries with Thomas, Sherman and Chancellor were at peak boom when they played press coverage at the line with their long, physical cornerbacks, Thomas patrolling in single-high safety coverage and Chancellor thumping foes underneath, closer to the line of scrimmage.
Those defensive backs didn’t have to cover as long as Seattle’s did in 2021.
Offenses didn’t run as many deep routes against Seattle back then because quarterbacks generally didn’t have the time for those longer-developing throws against the Seahawks’ deep, quality pass rushers.
For the second consecutive season, veteran end Carlos Dunlap was Seattle’s only proven, consistent pass rusher in 2021. He led the team with 8 1/2 sacks in 2021. Yet he mysteriously had games with 17, 13 and four snaps while the Seahawks sank out of playoff contention. Darrell Taylor was fast and dangerous off the edge in his first full season after missing his rookie year of 2020 injured.
But this Seattle pass rush has been nowhere near as deep as previous units that forced far more turnovers. Or even incomplete passes on third downs.
That’s Hurtt’s task with Donatell in varied coverages, pressures and looks in 2022.
For the second consecutive season, Norton’s unit could not get off the field in 2021. For the second year in a row the Seahawks played the most defensive snaps in the NFL: 70.6 plays per game. That meant Wilson and an offense that needed more chances to score got the least time with the ball (25:17 of the 60-minute game, on average) and ran the fewest plays in the league (956, 56.2 snaps per game).
Carroll said creating more turnovers on defense through having a better pass rush were two of the issues he talked with team chair Jody Allen about in their end-of-season meeting last month. The coach called the takeaways and pressure on quarterbacks “obvious things” Seattle must improve to get back to the playoffs in 2022.
“The lack of turnovers we were able to create, usually those come when you’re ahead in games,” Carroll said. “And if you’re well ahead, the ball gets more exposed, and you get more turnovers and that feeds off itself.
“Also, you’ve got to create them. And you create them with pass rush. The quarterback is the No. 1 critical aspect of turning the football over.”
This story was originally published February 4, 2022 at 1:13 PM.
