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For years, Pete Carroll coached the Seattle Legion of Booms, and the Seahawks were among the NFL’s elite defense teams. But Carroll admits that Seattle is no longer at the top of the NFL in defense and it’s time for a change.
Carroll said the Seahawks need to rethink their approach and be ready for change, and not just assume whatever they want to launch will work.
“For years, we’ve been a little arrogant about how we play defense because we’ve been able to do it,” Carroll said via Seattle Times’ Bob Condotta. “Just go ahead and play what we want to play. Now is not the time. It’s time to keep moving and keep growing.”
Carroll acknowledged that there was a time when the Seahawks’ defensive talent allowed them to use the same “Three Covers” formation week after week, year after year, but that’s not the case now.
“Remember how people just talked about how all they do is play threesomes?” Carroll said. “You know, they don’t play anything anymore, they must be dumb? We’ve been killing it for years, so we just [stayed with it]. The fact that our coordinators traveled all over the league on both sides of the ball, both offensively and defensively, made things difficult. It was hard for us. And so we stayed with it, but I just think I’ve been pecking at it for almost four years now, with what we’ve done subtly, and we’ve made more of a shift last year than we’ve been to just keep adjusting. It just needed to make it a legitimate shift.”
Clint Hertt was named offseason defensive coordinator with the goal of getting the defense back on track. If the Seahawks’ defense continues to falter and they end up bottom of the NFC West again, it may be time for a major overhaul and Carroll’s job could be in jeopardy.