Pete Carroll changing, at 70? That’s what Clint Hurtt to Seahawks defense coordinator says
Pete Carroll didn’t promote Clint Hurtt to run his defense just because players love Seattle’s invested, energetic line coach.
Carroll’s mandate to Hurtt is clear: change the Seahawks into a defense that attacks and confuses opponents, to force more game-changing mistakes.
“One thing that is going to be significantly different this year, we are going to be aggressive. We want that,” Hurtt said last week upon taking the defensive coordinator job from fired Ken Norton Jr.
The 43-year-old Hurtt’s promotion, plus Carroll hiring former Chicago Bears defensive coordinator Sean Desai and Minnesota Vikings assistant Karl Scott to coach the secondary and pass defense, are signals of a philosophical change.
Yes, at age 70, Carroll is changing.
“The fresh start feels exciting,” Carroll said, “and we’re looking forward to guys stepping up into their roles.
“The newness with Clint taking over on defense and working together with an old friend of his in Sean Desai gives us a really exciting outlook for the future. Being able to bring in a guy the caliber of Karl Scott to take over the secondary, we’re very fortunate to have landed him as the passing game coordinator.”
Carroll’s directive to Hurtt: pressure quarterbacks into more mistakes. That’s so Seattle can get more than the 18 turnovers its defense produced in 17 games during the 2021 season. That was the fewest in team history over an entire regular season.
The lack of takeaways is why the Seahawks faced more plays (1,201) and were on the field longer (34:43 per 60:00 game) than any other NFL team in 2021.
That’s no way to make the playoffs.
No number means more to winning to Carroll than turnovers, taking the ball away on defense and protecting it on offense. It’s the number-one rule of Carroll’s program, what every Seahawk hears the first hour of the first day he enters the team’s facility in Renton: It’s all about the ball.
Carroll has promoted Hurtt to make the defense more aggressive in getting the ball.
“The aggressiveness is going to have to come from our guys up front getting after the passer,” Hurtt said, “(and) continuing on being strong in the run game like we have been in last few years. That’s the mentality of a defense that we want to have, and our players respond to that mentality.
“Obviously, that comes down to one, how you coach it, and two, how you call it. So the aggressiveness and attacking offenses (includes) challenging the quarterback and making it hard on him not just with a rush but also with coverage.
“That’s where we’re going to be, and that’s what we want to make big improvements.”
The Seahawks won their only Super Bowl and played in a second consecutive one in the 2013 and ‘14 seasons lining up in a 4-3 defense (four linemen, three linebackers) with tight, press coverage. Opponents knew what Seattle was going to do, and the Seahawks didn’t care. They didn’t vary, because their defensive players were better than your offense.
Back then, they had Richard Sherman, Kam Chancellor and Earl Thomas. The Legion of Boom secondary had fresh swarms of 10 effective defensive linemen in front of them pressuring quarterbacks into throwing before they wanted to.
Then the LOB went bust. Sherman, Chancellor and Thomas got older, injured and prohibitively expensive. They eventually all had departed Seattle by the end of 2018. Since then, the Seahawks have lacked a consistent pass rush. Without that, the new, inferior defensive backs — Seattle played eight cornerbacks in 2021 — have had to cover far longer than the Legion of Boom did.
The results: Seattle has started the last two seasons on paces to break NFL records for passing yards and points allowed. In 2021, the Seahawks sunk to 7-10., their most losses since 2009, Jim Mora’s lone season before owner Paul Allen enticed Carroll from USC to remake the franchise.
Now, a dozen years into his Seattle tenure, Carroll is at a philosophical crossroads.
He likes to say his Seahawks defense has been a 4-3, with 3-4 principles of changing gaps with stand-up, weakside/strongside ends. Promoting Hurtt shows Carroll realizes he must adapt that system. He needs to change to help those defensive backs who aren’t Sherman, Chancellor and Thomas in their primes anymore. He must change his ways to create consistent pass rush. He must blitz more than he has.
And he must be more multiple and varied than sticking to the 4-3 as the Seahawks’ foundational scheme.
“We are going into a transition right now,” Hurtt said.
“We are adjusting. And things are going to be changing.”
More 3-4 influence
Hurtt was born in 1978 in the Bronx, New York City. He grew up upstate in Rochester. As the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle detailed in a 2020 feature on Hurtt, when his mother and father split he went to live with his mom in New York City. After she passed away Hurtt returned to Rochester to live with his father and attend Gates Chili High School there.
He was in a 4-3 defense as a linemen for the University of Miami, and again as he became a coach for the first time, for his Hurricanes from 2001-04 and ‘06-’09.
From Miami, Hurtt became the defensive line coach for the University of Louisville and head coach Charlie Strong. From 2010-13, Strong taught Hurtt the intricacies and versatility of 3-4 and even 3-3 schemes at Louisville. Louisville used three linemen with four and five defensive backs, with outside linebackers as premier edge pass rushers, to defend the increasingly high-flying college game.
In 2012, Louisville was co-Big East champion. It beat fourth-ranked Florida in the Sugar Bowl. In Hurtt’s last game coaching for Strong and Louisville, the Cardinals finished a 12-1 season by smacking Hurtt’s former Miami Hurricanes 36-9 in a bowl game.
Hurtt’s experience with Strong and the 3-4 attracted the Bears to hire Hurtt into his first NFL job, in 2014 as Chicago’s assistant defensive line coach.
Veteran Vic Fangio arrived to be the Bears defensive coordinator the following year. Fangio, now the head coach of the Denver Broncos, is renowned for 3-4 schemes that mix in 4-3 principles. Fangio uses varied blitzes and coverages, sometimes with a single-high safety, sometimes with two safeties deep. The offense never fully knows what to expect from down to down.
“The 3-4 system is something that I’ve really embraced, obviously Vic Fangio being a big influence on that,” Hurtt said.
“So with that being said, there are going to some elements of that (in his Seahawks plan). I would say we’re going to be multiple.”
That also means more man-to-man coverage for Seattle in 2021, over what has been Carroll’s preference for primarily zone.
“It can be a four-man rush and dropping seven,” Hurtt said of his goal of a more aggressive, effective pass rush. “There’s a mentality that comes along with it, and also the types of coverages you’re playing—not being so zone-y, being more aggressive with things, whether it’s in zone or man coverages, things of that nature.”
Fangio’s imprint remains all over Hurtt and Carroll’s redesign of Seattle’s defense for 2022: aggressive, changing, versatile defenses designed to challenge and confuse play callers and quarterbacks before and at the snap.
So it appears Carroll’s insistence on having Seattle in four down linemen every defensive snap will change along with the new schemes in 2022.
“When you’re in a 4-3 structure it’s hard to hide your coverages,” Hurtt said.
He said he learned that running a 3-4 at Louisville. Then, with the Bears, “Vic took it to a whole ‘nother level.”
Beating the Rams
The Seahawks need a new defense to win their division.
The Rams just won the Super Bowl. For years they have continued to mostly control if not dominate the Seahawks in the NFC West by spreading out Seattle’s defense from one sideline to the other, 53 1/3 yards horizontally.
Crossing routes, fly sweeps, out routes — the Seahawks have to figure out how to stop Cooper Kupp and the Rams’ outside pass game to win the division and get back to the Super Bowl.
From Jared Goff in the previous years to Matthew Stafford last season, the Seahawks’ defenses basically have been accommodating to coach Sean McVay’s and Los Angeles’ quarterbacks. That’s why the Rams have beaten Seattle 11 times in the last 15 meetings dating to September 2015.
Their second meeting of the 2021 season, Seattle’s 20-10 loss at L.A., essentially eliminated the Seahawks from the playoffs for only the second time in the last 10 years.
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“You have to have the ability to defend the edges and cover down,” Hurtt said, “so not to make it so easy on the quarterback.”
Hurtt said his defense will feature more of “a zone-man blend” (where) “you are not in one wheelhouse or another.”
‘Doc’ Desai for the DBs
Hurtt has already made what he believes will prove to be one of his most important moves to improve the Seahawks’ defense.
He, Carroll and general manager John Schneider hired Desai to be the man who teaches the team’s new mix of zone and man coverage in the secondary.
Desai is in Seattle’s new role of “associate head coach for defense.” In 2021, he was the 38-year-old defensive coordinator for Chicago.
Hurtt met Desai when he was interviewing to join the Bears’ as a defensive line coach at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, in the winter of 2014. Desai was then entering his second year as a defensive assistant with Chicago.
Hurtt instantly liked him upon learning Desai had spent a year on the football staff at the University of Miami, as assistant director of football operations. That was in 2011.
“Just a brain. His nickname is ‘Doc,’” Hurtt said.
It’s not just a nickname.
Desai is actually a doctor. He is believed to be the first Ph.D. to coach for the Seahawks.
He earned his undergraduate degrees in philosophy and political science, with a minor in biology, in 2004 from Boston University. A year later, he earned a master’s degree in higher and post-secondary education from Columbia. In 2008, Desai earned his Doctor of Education degree in educational administration from Temple. He was an adjunct professor at Temple for 15 months.
While Desai was the Bears’ defensive coordinator in 2021 he remained on the faculty at the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management in suburban Chicago. He was in that position for 5 1/2 years, ending this month when the Seahawks hired him.
Seattle’s new coordinator said Desai “definitely sees things differently” than most NFL defensive coaches, particularly how offenses are arrayed and are trying to attack defenses during games.
Desai has been working with defensive backs for most of his nine seasons in the NFL as an assistant coach. He coached Chicago’s safeties for two seasons before becoming the Bears’ defensive coordinator for the 2021 season.
Hurtt didn’t say it, but it appears he and Desai will be something of split coordinators of Seattle’s defense, Hurtt with the front seven linemen and linebackers pass rushing and stopping the run, and Desai with the defensive backs and pass coverage.
“Getting him here was a home run,” Hurtt said, “so I appreciate Pete and John getting that done.”
This story was originally published February 25, 2022 at 10:30 AM.
