Analysis: Seahawks quit looking like a Pete Carroll team in recent seasons

SEATTLE – The biggest reason Pete Carroll is no longer Seattle Seahawks coach is they stopped being the team resembling the one Pete Carroll created.

Carroll came to Seattle promising the Seahawks would, year in and year out, run the ball on offense and stop the run on defense as well as any NFL team.

As the Seahawks made their dizzying ascent to the top by the end of Carroll’s fourth season as coach, they did exactly that.

In the glory years from 2012-16 – when they won one Super Bowl, went to two, won three division titles and went 8-4 in the playoffs – the Seahawks ranked fourth or better four times in rushing offense and in the top 10 in rushing defense all five years.

But following the 2015 season, when Marshawn Lynch retired for the first time and the Seahawks began to lose some significant pieces off their defense, that began to slip.

The Seahawks ranked in the top 10 in rushing offense just twice after 2015 – which included ranking first in 2018 after the hiring of offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer and shifted to make running a priority.

They ranked in the top 10 in rushing defense just once after 2016, and five times they were in the bottom half of the league.

Each fell off precipitously the past two years, as the Seahawks finished 18th and 28th in rushing offense in 2022 and 2023, respectively, and 30th and 31st in run defense.

That was despite making significant investments to bolster the rushing attack and the run defense. They included spending second-round picks the past two seasons on running backs (Kenneth Walker III and Zach Charbonnet) and remaking the defensive line in 2023 with moves such as signing Dre’Mont Jones to a three-year contract worth just over $17 million a year, the most they have given to an external free agent.

On Wednesday, as Carroll discussed the decision to remove him as coach, he admitted that the Seahawks had veered off course the past few years.

“We lost our edge, really, the edge to be great, which was really how we ran the football and how we played defense,” Carroll said. “It wasn’t as good as it needed to be. You all get tired of me thinking I’m 3 yards and a cloud of dust. You guys don’t get it. I’m sorry about that. But it’s part of the whole cycle of what you do when you put a football team together. We weren’t as clear in the last couple of years.”

It wasn’t due to a lack of trying.

Along with myriad personnel moves – the trade for safety Jamal Adams and spending the fifth overall pick on Devon Witherspoon were aimed at shoring up the run defense in the secondary and attempting to make the Seahawks a feared defense as they’d been in the Legion of Boom days – Carroll also changed defensive coordinators twice since Dan Quinn left following the 2014 season.

Carroll made the most seismic schematic shift of his Seattle career following the 2021 season when he fired defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. and promoted Clint Hurtt. He brought in two coaches from the outside – Sean Desai and Karl Scott – to oversee the pass defense and secondary.

All were versed in a 3-4 defense run by Vic Fangio that stood in stark contrast to the 4-3 defense that had been a trademark for Carroll.

During much of the first half of Carroll’s tenure, the Seahawks were known for the simplicity of their defense, with Carroll content to let the talents of Bobby Wagner, Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor and Richard Sherman do their thing regardless of how opponents lined up. Carroll often referred to it as giving the players as little as possible to think about, instead allowing them to play fast.

As the talent waned, that didn’t work as well. Carroll acknowledged Wednesday that the moves to get back to those glory days didn’t work as hoped.

“You need some special qualities about your team that separates you and makes you an individual,” Carroll said. “And we kind of got in the mix too much. We weren’t high profiled enough in the crucial areas we needed to be. So it was just always a pursuit. Always chasing it and trying to get there.”

As for the running offense, it never seemed the same after Lynch left, as well as the gradual dissolution of the offensive line that won the Super Bowl. That was due in part to the need for cap space to re-sign the big names on defense and quarterback Russell Wilson.

There was also the change in Wilson.

He had been a big part of the running game in his early years, rushing for 849 yards in 2014. Many of those came out of a zone-read scheme in which Wilson could hand off to Lynch or keep the ball, depending on what he read out of the defense.

As Wilson aged, the zone-read plays became less frequent and evaporated once he was traded to Denver.

When the Seahawks followed the Wilson trade with a 9-8 record, with Walker rushing for 1,050 yards and some young pieces on defense showing promise, it appeared they had weathered the storm and could get back to true contention.

The team’s starts this season of 5-2 and 6-3, buoyed by last-minute comeback wins led by Geno Smith, masked some obvious flaws.

After averaging 4.8 yards per carry last season to finish seventh in the NFL, the Seahawks averaged just 4.1 this season.

The defense improved only marginally against the run – from 4.9 per carry in 2022 to 4.6 this season.

The weaknesses were never more on display than in the second half of the season when the Seahawks began to play some of the NFL’s best teams.

They went 0-3 against the Ravens and 49ers – the teams that got the No. 1 seeds in each conference – and were outscored by a combined 64 points. They went 3-5 against the eight other teams on they schedule who had winning records this season, outscored by a combined 22. The Seahawks went 6-0 against the six teams on their schedule that finished with losing records, three by three points or fewer.

In deciding to move on from Carroll, they will look for a coach who can bring back the toughness and physicality necessary to compete with the 49ers and Rams, whose two wins against the Seahawks proved critical.

That’s one reason Quinn was immediately regarded as a possible successor. He led a defense that has finished seventh, fifth and fifth in points allowed in his three years with Dallas.

As he departed Wednesday, Carroll spoke of the exciting future he thinks awaits the Seahawks.

But he also spoke of the regret of not being able to reach that potential the past few seasons.

“It’s the games, you know?” he said. “Look at this season. We screwed it up and made (kicker) Jason (Myers) have to kick a 55-yard … field goal to beat the Rams, in the wind – in an indoor stadium that was windy somehow or whatever it was. How hard can you make it? Not winning the … Dallas game (a 41-35 loss). Think of all the games we won in the exact same scenario. …. There ain’t enough wins. As a coach there’s not enough wins. We know right now there’s not enough wins this season.”

Because of that, it will be the job of someone other than Pete Carroll to get the Seahawks looking again like a Pete Carroll team.