Pete Carroll, Seahawks forced to change their previously ‘arrogant’ ways on defense
Pete Carroll admits it. He and his Seahawks were “arrogant” in how simply and effectively they played defense in their Super Bowl years.
No need to tell them, or you: Those days are long gone.
From 2012-15, when Seattle had the Legion of Boom secondary and the NFL’s number one-ranked defense, Carroll had the Seahawks lining up in a base 4-3 scheme that featured “Cover 3.” That’s three-deep zone coverage, with a single high safety and the two, sticky cornerbacks responsible for the deep thirds of the field.
The entire league knew what those Seahawks were running. Carroll didn’t care. His players — Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor, Bobby Wagner, K.J. Wright, Michael Bennett, Cliff Avril, Red Bryant and friends — were better than your players.
Seattle’s “Jimmys and Joes” were better than any other team’s Xs and Os, to use a football term as old as goal lines.
“I’ll tell you, we’ve been a little bit arrogant over the years, the way we play defense,” Carroll said this week, off the podium at the Indiana Convention Center and the NFL scouting combine. “Because we’ve been able to do it, just go ahead and play what we want to play. ...
“Remember how people just talk about... ‘All they do is play 3-deep. You know, they don’t play anything else. They must be stupid’? You know, we were killing it for years, so we just (kept doing it).
“It’s not that time right now.”
The Jimmys and Joes — the Richards and Earls — are gone. The Legion of Boom is bust. Carroll and his Seahawks used eight(!) cornerbacks last season. They didn’t use eight cornerbacks in five seasons during their heyday.
Seattle’s past, Super Bowl defenses sent in hockey-like line changes up front. Ten, relentless defensive linemen overwhelmed tired offensive lines. Those Seahawks decisively pressured quarterbacks in the fourth quarters to win games more consistently than any stretch in team history, before or since.
Seattle’s defense in 2020 and ‘21 has failed to get a consistent pass rush from its front four. Worse, the quality depth behind the starters has been wafer-thin. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say the Seahawks would have had zero pressure on QBs two seasons ago had they not blitzed safety Jamal Adams so much. They had to. He set the NFL record for sacks by a defensive back (9 1/2).
Last season they chose to play more two-deep, zone coverage — Adams back deep with fellow safety Quandre Diggs — than Carroll’s Seahawks had played in the previous decade.
Carroll hinted Wednesday that Adams coming off winter shoulder surgery then holding in to get a new contract last summer led coaches to blitz him less in 2021.
But that’s not the full story.
Carroll didn’t trust all the cornerbacks he had rotating through the lineup in 2021. He felt he needed Adams back in coverage more, as a safeguard against huge pass plays. Adams blitzed quarterbacks at less than half the rate he had blitzed in 2020. He covered receivers more than twice as much. He got zero sacks last season.
Seattle’s defense finished ranked 31st in the NFL. It produced just 18 turnovers in 17 games, the fewest takeaways over an entire season in franchise history. The Seahawks finished 7-10. It was Carroll’s first losing season since 2011, when he was ransacking the franchise and starting over.
Now he’s largely starting over again, on defense.
Enter Clint Hurtt
The need to be different — to be more varied in pass coverage, with new pressure packages, with new, 3-4-like schemes and fronts — is why Carroll fired Ken Norton Jr., his trusted deputy in Carroll’s old way, and promoted line coach Clint Hurtt to replace him as defensive coordinator for the 2022 season.
It’s also why Carroll hired former Chicago Bears defensive coordinator Sean Desai. He’s the new associate head coach for the defense.
Carroll fired Andre Curtis as Seattle’s secondary coach. He replaced Curtis with Karl Scott, who was secondary coach with the Minnesota Vikings and before that for Nick Saban at the University of Alabama.
Hurtt said the biggest change he’s bringing is more aggression.
That means he will use Adams more like Seattle used him in 2020 than in ‘21.
“Jamal is still a difference-maker. How we use him, that’s going to be on me,” Hurtt, 43, said two weeks ago, upon taking the first coordinator job of his 21 years in coaching. “It’s our responsibility, my responsibility, to make sure we put him in positions so he can be at his very best. And we know how great he is at doing that.
“The other side of it, though — and to his credit — as the (2021) season progressed we put him in positions that, really, it was not his background.
“Honestly, there’s multiple things that he’s got to be able to do, so a quarterback can’t always peg him for being just one particular type of way.”
It’s not just with Adams. Carroll wants his entire defense to be more varied, less predictable, more aggressive and confusing to offenses in 2022.
“It’s time to keep moving and keep growing,” Carroll said this week in Indianapolis. “We’ve played the running game so well (allowing just) 3.8 (yards rushing) for the season (in 2021). That’s pretty darn good in this league.”
But, Carroll added with a smile, “maybe that’s not the only thing we need to do well. We can do some other things, too.”
A move to more 3-4
For the first 11 seasons he led the Seahawks, Carroll liked to say his was a 4-3 defense with 3-4 characteristics. That included multiple-gap linemen and outside linebackers such as Bruce Irvin, whose specialty was rushing the quarterback.
In 2022, the Seahawks will likely be more of a 3-4 defense with 4-3 characteristics.
Carlos Dunlap is an example. The team’s sack leader last season with 8 1/2 is a typical 4-3 end. He will be the top lineman pass rusher on passing downs.
For now it appears Seattle expects to team Dunlap with Darrell Taylor as the primary edge rushers on third downs. Taylor had 6 1/2 sacks in his first season playing in the defense in 2021. In Hurtt’s more varied approach this year, expect Taylor to return to the role the Seahawks drafted him for in 2020’s second round: an outside linebacker who pass rushes, and in more 3-4 looks.
“There’s going to be a strong influence on our side of the ball, in defense (with the new coaches), that will take us to some places that I’ve been really hoping to get to,” Carroll said. “We’ve been making our moves suddenly, but now we can make it more significantly.
“I think our players are going to really like it. Meetings so far have been great. The creativity and the challenge of it all, I’ve just been thrilled with being in it.”
Hurtt talked last month of the influences of coaches Vic Fangio, his mentor with the Bears, and Charlie Strong have had on his schemes. Strong hired Hurtt onto his staff at the University of Louisville for 2010-13. It was his last job before his first one in the NFL, for Fangio and the Bears as a defensive line coach in 2014.
Fangio and Strong taught Hurtt how to coach 3-4 schemes. They featured a stud nose tackle to control run defense and fast outside linebackers as edge rushers. Hurtt mentioned how Strong even ran a lot of 3-3-5 to slow college pass offenses. That is, three linemen, three linebackers and five defensive backs.
A 3-3-5 would be a radical change for Carroll. It would also be a way for the Seahawks to get Adams back into the more aggressive, blitzing role he had flourishing for them in 2020. Hurtt could use Adams as a wild-card, blitz safety nearer the line of scrimmage while still having four DBs back deep in coverage. Marquise Blair is on track to be the fifth defensive back. Carroll wants him as the nickel man.
Seattle’s coaches have loved Blair, 24, since they drafted him in the second round out of Utah in 2019. But he’s had his last two seasons and starting jobs ended early by major injuries.
Blair is coming off a broken kneecap from last year. Carroll and general manager John Schneider said this week Blair looks great in his recovery. They say he will be ready to reclaim a big role in the defense when training camp begins in July.
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‘A legitimate shift’
At the very least, more man-to-man coverage is likely. Much more man than in Carroll’s old, zone ways.
The 2022 Seahawks won’t be so “zone-y,” is the way Hurtt put it.
“We’ve done quite a bit of that (two-high safety coverage),” Carroll said of the Seahawks lately. “And so, we feel like we need to do everything. We need to use our single-high stuff and our two-high stuff to mix that and do a really nice job of that.
Carroll acknowledged “this is a little bit bigger jump this time” in his defensive scheme,
“But it’s not different for me to do this,” the 70-year-old head man said. “To me, it seems the same. I mean, because I’m always freaking about, I may be more that way than anybody on our staff. And it has nothing to do with how old you are. It just has to do with competing. And you’re either competing or you’re not, like I tell you guys all the time.
“And that’s how I do it, by adapting and growing and pushing. You’ve got to push the coaches, and I push them as far as I can. And sometimes you’ve got to change. ...
“I’m freaking jacked up, if you want to know the truth. I’m jacked up. I’m not kidding. I’m not a kidding.
“I can’t wait to get this thing going.”
This story was originally published March 4, 2022 at 12:29 PM.
