On Pete Carroll Envisioning Having 'Point Guard' For Seahawks' Next Quarterback
Suddenly the Seahawks are big players in the quarterback market. Yes, Drew Lock was acquired as part of the colossal Russell Wilson trade, but as general manager John Schneider outlined on March 16, the Seahawks will “continue to explore options.”
In that same press conference, Pete Carroll appeared rejuvenated. The head coach made it clear what he wants from the quarterback position.
“What we need in our offense is the same thing that we’ve always needed, whether it was Carson Palmer or Russell Wilson,” the 70-year old coach began. “We need a point guard.”
This isn’t the first time Carroll has used the basketball position to illustrate what he wants out of his quarterback. Carroll used the point guard comparison in the early years of his Seattle tenue and also while coaching at USC. Others saw the same metaphor in Seattle’s early quarterbacking.
“He [Russell Wilson] runs the offense like a premiere NBA point guard, constantly in control of both the passing attack, his own reads and even his improvisation,” Will Brinson wrote for CBS Sports in his 2013 Seahawks season preview.
“Why Russell Wilson was able to be successful, it's because Pete Carroll has built a system where Russell Wilson is basically the point guard,” NFL.com analyst Bucky Brooks said when studying Johnny Manziel in 2014. “Some nights he needs to look for his shot and be the guy that is driving that offense. Other nights, he plays the role of being the distributor.”
After the peak experience of the Carroll-Schneider era, the Seahawks' 43-8 blowout victory over the Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII, Carroll returned to his own point guard thinking.
"What did we throw, 25 times or something tonight? Perfect,” he told NFL Network. “It was perfect. He [Wilson] played point guard and did a fantastic job. Just like we had hoped; you know, we're not looking for him to throw 400 yards, we don't need it. If we do, we'll call on it.”
When the Seahawks signed Packers quarterback Matt Flynn during the 2012 offseason, Carroll praised Green Bay’s methods of quarterback development.
“Key is making the quarterback part of the offense,” Carroll assessed to USA Today’s Doug Farrar on March 19, 2012.
Carroll does not want to overload the passer with responsibilities, especially when they are a newcomer to the team or a rookie. He said as much in 2011.
"We're not trying to make our quarterback the guy that's gotta throw the ball 40 times a game. We want a guy that manages the offense really well, and can keep us moving and get us into the best plays, that allows the whole team to function.
"All the way back to the USC days that's all we've ever asked of our quarterbacks. They won Heismans and all that, but they were always just the point guard in the offense. Even back to Carson Palmer and through [Mark] Sanchez, all those guys, and that's what we'd like to see right now."
Carroll’s 2010 season with Matt Hasselbeck as his starter is an interesting case study.
“Whatever it takes to keep the football, we’ll do it,” Carroll said on October 25, 2010 following Hasselbeck going 10 quarters without an interception and Seattle climbing to first place in the NFC West. Hasselback had started the first four games of the year with six interceptions and had thrown 17 interceptions the prior season.
“After Hasselbeck was picked off three times in a Week 2 loss at Denver, Carroll made the decision to dial back the offense,” Danny O’Neil outlined in a November Spokesman Review column.
“We were throwing some picks earlier in the season, and he had to get through that,” Carroll said. “[To] understand how careful he needed to be with the football. We had almost to take a couple steps backward to get that down.
“We were very conservative with him for a while. We decided, ‘Let’s go now. It’s time to go.'"
As it happened, Hasselbeck returned to pick-happiness following these comments, with 10 interceptions thrown in the next four games; and, as a consequence, offensive coordinator Jeremy Bates was fired at the end of the year.
Whatever the end result of 2010, its midseason is just one example of Carroll trying to make things easier on his quarterback to avoid turnovers. Protecting the football is a guiding principle to the quarterback play—and play overall—that Carroll desires. The coach has always been a great believer in the importance of winning the turnover battle in order to win football games. Like Carroll's own admission with Hasselbeck, the coach will tweak the gameplan if required to ensure the passer is not giving the ball away.
The first-known usage of Carroll's “point guard” imagery was during his college days. Mark Sanchez’s junior year at USC saw the quarterback start the 2008 season with seven interceptions in the Trojans' first seven games. Over the next three games, Sanchez put together consecutive zero-interception performances while throwing for six touchdowns. Carroll was asked about this on November 25, 2008 ahead of USC's matchup with Notre Dame, and his comments were highly insightful. Clearly, his thought process has not changed much 14 years on:
Question: “You've obviously been successful in getting to Mark Sanchez about avoiding turnovers since the Arizona game. How fine a line is there between doing that and taking away some of the aggressiveness that allowed him to make so many big plays early in the season?”
Pete Carroll: “Yeah, there is something to that. That comes up in a couple different areas. When we were talking about the issue with penalties, we've had an extraordinarily aggressive defense throughout this season. I don't want to take away that aggressiveness, that nature. It's the same with an individual player. It certainly applies to the quarterback spot.
But there's like these stages of growth for the quarterback that they have to go through these experiences to find the best of themselves. And we're still going through that, I think. And I think that happens for years for players. I mean, you'd like to say you figure it out one game, now you've arrived. But that's not the way it works. For the guys that have played in the NFL for years, you have to remember, they were all rookies, they all had year two, three, four, when they were scrambling around trying to figure it out. We don't get that luxury with our guys. We get a few games and you have to find your highest level of play. It's accelerated very much in a shortened career.
I think Mark is in the middle of all that. I think he's doing a great job. He's been receptive and compliant and introspective, all of the things he needs to figure it out. He's doing really well. He's giving us a chance to win every football game. That's really what we're asking him to do.
We've never asked our quarterback, since we got here, to be the star player and to carry the load and carry the team and our hopes on their shoulders, but to be the point guard in the offense and do the things that our offense calls for, to mix the ball around, to do things to get us winning ways. A big aspect of that is to not give the football to our opponent.
So that emphasis, although it's been taught throughout Mark's career, has really come to light here in the last few weeks and he's done a great job of just not giving the ball away, and we win our football games. So I think he's doing a great job of working through it.
The game plans to some extent, a couple weeks ago we really curled up, we didn't want to give the football to Cal, a team that was really taking advantage and riding the wave of a lot of turnovers and all that. We took that out of their game. They didn't get to do that against us. We had a nice, solid win. I think we really were responsible as a coaching staff for that happening. Mark played to it just right.
So I think it's a work in progress always, though. You're working with your guys to make sure that you're bringing them along just right. Hopefully we'll continue to do that. Last week, we ran for close to 300 yards. It was the way we won the football game. We didn't need to throw the football to get it done. It turned out that way. Mark played to that very well.
I think he's doing what we're asking him to do in great fashion. I wouldn't be surprised in the last three weeks of this season that we do get a lot of opportunities to throw the football and the ball does get out and down the field again. We're always looking for it. That's always part of our mindset.”
All of this—the measured aggression, the stages of growth, the point guard nature, the catered gameplans—matches Carroll’s quarterback expectations for 2022.
“We need a guy that plays the game and moves the football around to the guys that are open and does all of the things that manages the game and so that we can play great football,” Carroll explained this past Wednesday.
“Because we’re gonna win with defense, we’re gonna win with how we play in special teams and we’re gonna run the football to help the whole thing fit together. That’s never changed, it’s never been a philosophy that we needed to alter other than to continue to grow and make dynamic and present and current and all.
“And that’s what we’re looking for. We need to take care of the football. And so if the guy can do that, and we can teach him to do that. Russell was famous for it, he did an extraordinary job through all of his early years when he was learning the NFL and gaining, you know, his understanding. He was terrific at taking care of the ball and we’ll need a guy that will do that.”
The Seahawks will surely take a quarterback at some point in next month's draft. Who they pick or where they take this mystery passer is less certain. However, Carroll’s point guard approach should place this newcomer in an excellent position to grow. The pressures of the NFL ask a lot of a signal-caller, while the league-wide importance of quarterbacks often sees rookies over-drafted and thrust into starting roles that they are not ready for. This crop of quarterbacks in particular is regarded as needing time to become starter-ready.
As for the Seahawks’ current quarterback option of Drew Lock? Well, Lock stated Monday that he is looking to bring a mentality that aligns with Carroll’s wishes. The former second-round pick was asked about being a “point guard," a term inferred by the questioner to mean game manager.
“I was never a point guard in basketball, I was always a shooting guard in basketball and I like to score points, I guess,” Lock responded. “So I think that's a good thing to be as a quarterback too, a guy that likes to score points but there is definitely a 'game-manager' identity to being a really really good quarterback in this league.”
Lock’s first press conference as a Seahawk featured plenty of references to point guard-style quarterback play, including the 25-year old’s answer on what lessons he had learned in his first three years of NFL football:
“A really good one is just being patient. The other side of the ball gets paid a lot of money to stop you as well. So let's not make their job easier, by putting the ball into not advantageous situations. Let's be smart with the football, let's take the shots when they're there and let's just continuously move the ball. Positive chunks, positive yardage every single play. You know when you come out of college, you get 90-plus plays a game, especially in the offense that I ran when I was at Missouri. You know you get to run a ton of plays, you get to take these big shots, you get to run around a little bit, and scramble and know that, if we're bad on this one, I got 89 more plays to go. I can surely make something happen in those. It's a lot about taking the risks at a calculated level, so to say.”
The idea of calculated risks cropped up again when Lock was asked what managing a game looked like in his eyes.
“I think it's kinda what I said earlier, just calculated risks,” the quarterback started. “We know that we've got plays that are designed to take a shot. But if they're not there, just check it down, don't be afraid to just move the chains. If you gain a yard on this play it's a positive play for us and I think that was a big mentality Teddy [Bridgewater] took and being safe with the ball at the same time.”
Teddy Bridgewater earned earlier praise from Lock as well, with the seasoned veteran’s style clearly influencing Lock’s perception of the position.
“Teddy did a lot for me,” Lock, who spent the 2021 season backing up Bridgewater, told reporters. “I learned a lot from him and being able to watch those first games when I was actually the backup and watch how he worked the pocket, watch how he managed games, watch how he came to the sideline. It was the first time that I got to really feel a veteran quarterback in the room and I think Teddy did a good job of being a point guard. And I definitely learned a lot from him on how to do that.”
We can argue about the Seahawks’ pass-run splits and early down pass rate (Carroll has been pass-heavy over the last two seasons and never been an establish-the-run head coach). Looking forward, however, Carroll’s philosophy appears ideal for a team that is entering a transition period that will feature an open quarterback competition and likely a rookie in need of patient, non-pressurized development.
Carroll’s revitalized energy is that of a coach who can start again by finding his new point guard with his philosophy.
