How Clint Hurtt’s 3-4 Seahawks Defense Can Lean on Pete Carroll’s 'Stick' Experience, Part 2
This is a continuation of How Clint Hurtt’s 3-4 Seahawks Defense Can Lean on Pete Carroll’s 'Stick' Experience. In part two, Matty F. Brown looks at how Carroll and Hurtt's college experiences helped shape their 3-4 and bear front usage in Seattle.
Not only has Pete Carroll touched on his personnel being 3-4-like in previous seasons and not only has the Seahawks defense leaned hard on bear fronts: Carroll’s reasons for installing his version of bear in the first place are also very similar to that of new defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt’s.
“What I really loved was the fact that it was so challenging on the quarterback,” Hurtt said on February 16 of his University of Louisville experience that influenced his preference for a 3-4 system.
"When the game becomes spread out—especially in college football—you see it more and more and it’s starting to bleed into the NFL, where now you’ve got to cover the whole field," Hurtt continued. "You know, when you’re in a 4-3 structure, sometimes it’s really hard to hide and disguise coverages the way you would like to. I’m not saying you can’t, but you’re gonna give the good quarterbacks tells. So get into that system of being in a 3-4 structure, and the ability to hide coverage, pressures and things of that nature was really impactful.”
Carroll experienced his bear/stick enlightenment back at USC in 2006—a time where college football’s offenses were first starting to embrace the spread on a wide scale. As Carroll said on bear in his Week 13, 2020 presser: “We have enough background that we can do a lot of things. We’ve been through so much over the years.”
The teacher was Texas and Vince Young.
Pasadena, California
January 4, 2006: Once hazy, the dark sky turned blue, red and green. It was a mild West Coast evening as the jubilant band played their victory song. The carpet of confetti thickened fast, watched by almost 100,000 people.
Wearing a white Nike polo shirt, under-layer and coaching chinos, Pete Carroll’s trademarks of energy and optimism had evaporated. Even the coach’s clothes looked sad—crumpled polyester blend hanging forlorn as Carroll trudged towards a post-game handshake of misery. His crestfallen palms met Texas head coach Mack Brown's euphoria. Carroll’s team battled in what is still widely regarded as the greatest college football game of all-time—and the USC dynasty fell in the last seconds.
Before defeat in the Rose Bowl, Carroll had won 44 of his last 45 games, with 38 of them being achieved by double-digit margins. That evening, Carroll’s vaunted defense did not merely allow a ton of points. No, what made the 41-38 loss to Texas more distressing was that Carroll’s unit—the one he had shaped, recruited and schemed—surrendered a go-ahead touchdown with just 19 seconds remaining.
The Trojans had been in a commanding position: with six minutes and 42 seconds left to play, USC led by 12 points.
“The offense was just smoking,” Carroll told local authors Steve Bisheff and Loel Schrader afterwards.
The issue for the head coach, as the box-score indicates, was the defense.
When the score somehow grew close, it came down to one moment for the USC defense. The Longhorns' drive was kept alive via a facemask call on a 3rd and 12 near midfield and, all-too-suddenly, they were in the red zone. Carroll was seen staring down at his play-sheet for the crucial 4th and 5 play-call. With the game on the line—the point where USC could three-peat as national champions—the 54-year old held his stiff, pale, laminate searching for the answer to what would ultimately decide the BCS National Championship.
On the 3rd and 5 prior, Carroll had called a fire zone pressure with middle field closed, three-deep, three-under coverage that resulted in an incompletion. Texas was in 11 personnel (one running back, one tight end, three receivers) via a 3x1 shotgun set. The Longhorns route released the No. 3 receiver to the flat and had the No. 1 and No. 2 receivers run comebacks, while their isolated No. 1 receiver ran goal-line post.
The Trojans came out in 4-1-6 dime personnel in a play-call that aligned them in an even front—their double three-technique, pass-rush look. They tried to disguise a two-high look and also which safety was rotating down. On the snap, both defensive tackles looked to slant into the interior A-gaps. To the trips side, linebacker Collin Ashton blitzed the strong B-gap. Meanwhile, cornerback Josh Pinkard was aligned in the box as a 20-tech. He was sent as a blitzer through the weak B-gap, presumably for his speed. (He later became a safety in Carroll’s defense in Seattle).
Defensive end Lawrence Jackson won his one-on-one facing left tackle Jonathan Scott, blending get-off with a nice long arm-to-rip. Meanwhile, the weak 3-technique—true freshman Averell Spicer—capitalized on the center sliding away from him and took right guard Will Allen Jr. by surprise, slipping into the A-gap and backfield. Young was discomforted.
Right tackle Justin Blalock was momentarily occupied by the weak defensive end Frostee Rucker, who stepped forwards before his drop back into coverage as the weak “hot to 2” defender. In this situation, the H2 role was tasked primarily with matching a release from the running back. With Blalock removed from immediate action, running back Ramonce Taylor had to pick up the blitzing Pinkard or the corner would have gone clean through the B-gap for the sack.
Young held the middle-of-field safety Scott Ware before firing the backside route to Limas Sweed. For a hurried throw, it was close to perfect, bulleted right in between the outside leverage cornerback Kevin Thomas and post safety. The ball actually hit Sweed in the hands, but it fell incomplete with ferocious velocity and the echoes of Ware’s fast-approaching footsteps.
USC needed just one more stop defending from their own eight-yard line. In the high stakes situation with the chance to stick or twist, Carroll opted for the exact same play-call.
Texas went back-to-back too. Well, almost. The slight—albeit integral—difference was what it did with its running back.
Taylor subbed out for Selvin Young at tailback.
“We walk up to the line and Coach Carroll was bringing safeties and corners a lot and dropping his linebackers a lot that game. He'd bring his safeties a lot, and they're little guys so it's fun to hit them, you know what I mean?” reflected Texas left guard Kasey Studdard to 247 Sports in 2017.
“If you're going to bring a little guy at me I'm just going to destroy him all day long, so it didn't bother us. But it was the identifying who had who. I remember that last play walking up, and I remember Selvin—the last two plays, Lyle was yelling, ‘Alright Selvin, you've got him! Kasey, you see him over there?’ It was a lot of talk because they were coming with these exotic blitzes bringing these safeties and corners.”
From Texas’ viewpoint, their communication up front won.
“You see Vince go through his progression. He looked at the primary, went to the secondary [tight end] and he even got to the third guy before he took off,” assessed then-Texas tight ends coach Bruce Chambers afterwards to 247 Sports in 2017.
“I remember the safety came on my side, blitzed and I got him,” described Studdard.
However rosy the Texas recollection, USC’s pressure did cause Vince Young similar anguish to the 3rd and 5. The quarterback decided to read his trips-side combination and nothing looked good by the time that Jackson started to arrive fast off the front-side edge.
“I remember getting close,” Jackson told CBS Sports in 2016. “As soon as I got to him and reached my hand up, it's almost as if he stepped up at the same time. It was literally like magic. One moment Young was there and the next minute, he wasn't.”
“I went all the way through my progression,” recalled Vince Young after the game. “But there was nobody open.”
Spicer once more penetrated the backfield through the A-gaps, even with Allen playing it better. But who were the Trojans flushing Vince Young towards? The key—as promised—was at running back.
Rather than keep their back in like they had on the 3rd and 5, Texas released Selvin Young on a circle route that commanded the attention of Rucker as the H2 defender. According to the running back, this was an inspired moment of on-field intelligence from him and Blalock.
“Time was ticking and we needed to score. We ran the exact same play we ran before,” began Selvin Young to 247 Sports in 2017. “Blalock and I was like, ‘Hey, they dropping and we’re getting out of the backfield.’ I told Blalock I would go out and do a little in-route.”
In coverage, Rucker looked to widen and collision Selvin Young, conscious that he could be the first down outlet. The time and leverage that this required of the big defensive end was all that Vince Young needed. Rucker was conflicted by the running back threatening him inside while simultaneously being responsible for the edge.
“Rucker tried to reach out and knock me off and that gave Vince all the space he needed to keep it outside,” recounted Selvin Young. “He did it perfectly, a beast on another level.”
The Trojans’ containment on the side Vince Young was flushed to was removed.
“I thought that Justin Blalock did a tremendous job of over-setting the corner so that he would come inside and then collapsed him,” highlighted Chambers to 247 Sports in 2017, applauding the Longhorns’ execution.
This is an excellent observation. Blalock at right tackle bought himself the time and room to smack the blitzing Pinkard away from Vince Young. Pinkard saw a very peculiar B-gap. His assignment could well have been to contain through this gap. However, the width and depth of the B-gap became a trap which the corner got stuck inside.
“Once that happened they had no containment,” finished Chambers. "They had Frostee Rucker out there at 280-something pounds, he wasn’t going to catch [Young].”
“Once I blocked my man, I had a pretty good vantage point of the scramble,” Blalock told 247 Sports in 2017. “It was pretty special. I had no doubt at all. Even if they put Usain Bolt out there he’s going to find a way to get into the end zone.”
“The next thing I know, I see Vince take it into in the end zone,” was Studdard’s version of events in that 247 Sports 2017 oral history.
Blalock’s play earned praise from his teammate as well.
“On the film, you see they brought that outside safety or corner and Blalock just destroyed him. Then, boom, there goes Vince for the touchdown. It was a very focused, serious time, but you knew with No. 10 you were going to put it across.”
“The defensive lineman was giving me the edge, so I took it down,” summarized Vince Young post-game.
“He's a beast, man. He did his thing,” praised the helpless Rucker afterwards. “He's so big, you don't expect him to have quick twitch moves like that.”
Even if Pinkard had moved to contain more, Vince Young could have run through the open B-gap behind what would essentially have been a lead block from Selvin Young. Clearly, USC required both B-gaps closed and, at the same time, both edge defenders playing with less conflict. It was too late in Pasedena. The Longhorns won their first national title in 35 years; USC and Carroll lost their first game since September 27, 2003.
The 2006 Rose Bowl featured a ton of talent on both sides. The top-three players in the Heisman Trophy voting—Young, running back Reggie Bush and quarterback Matt Leinart—were on display, plus 61 of the players in attendance would eventually be drafted by an NFL team (37 from USC, 24 from Texas). Yet the game is synonymous with one man, and for good reason.
Vince Young was dominant, and his stat line was a video game come to life: 467 yards of total offense, 30 of 40 passes completed for 267 yards, 19 rushes for 200 yards and three touchdowns.
Young’s performance was described as “transcendent” and “ridiculously dominant” by Sports Illustrated’s Austin Murphy. Carroll’s defense was “made to look like so many cardinal-and-gold pylons.” The 4th and 5 was not a freak, one-off occurrence. It was the trend of the game.
“He [Young] probably made us miss a dozen tackles tonight and we slipped right off the guy,” Carroll told reporters in his post-game press conference. “Vince Young was extraordinary. He was an extraordinary talent out there tonight. It was obviously the difference in the football game. It was obvious why they were so affected this year. Good players all over the board, but he's off the charts. He's a heck of a football player.”
The Never-Ending Need to Adapt
So how does this relate to bear fronts and the 3-4? Well, the Trojans’ issues were not purely based in the extraordinary playmaking of Vince Young and their own poor execution. Scheme, like the game-deciding 4th and 5, was also at fault. As Murphy described at the time, Texas’ gameplan was “taking advantage of USC's utter befuddlement in the face of the Longhorns’ zone-read option offense.”
Carroll could have blamed the loss on shear playmaking brilliance and stubbornly not evolved. His comments one day after the somehow more gut-wrenching defeat of Super Bowl XLIX harkened back to the 2006 Rose Bowl with that execution messaging.
“I have said for a lot of years with these guys that when we are right, it takes extraordinary things to beat us,” the head coach told reporters on Monday, February 2, 2015. “Somebody is going to make a big play that you couldn't explain. I always go back to the Vince Young night because that's when I first realized it, that if we are on our game and we play like we play—and this has been a long time—then things like what happened last night have to happen. Otherwise, we are going to find a way.”
Referencing the Rose Bowl defeat as a learning moment for a different team was savvy coaching from Carroll in a time of crisis. What Carroll omitted post-Super Bowl, however, was that he did indeed adapt schematically after the Vince Young experience. Something had to change for Carroll’s defense moving on from January 2006. The National Championship was a pivotal moment. Carroll and his staff researched their way into bear fronts and stick defense.
This, as Hurtt explained in 2022, allowed the defense to play two wide edge defenders yet still be able to cover down—placing a defender over each immediate receiving threat. For the 2006 Trojans, this enabled them versus spread zone-read attacks to surf technique the read-side end while also removing any potential quick throw to the slot by alignment. And with the three interior defensive linemen in the two B-gaps and over the center, the second-level defenders behind were kept clean to flow to where the football ended up. With spread, shotgun offenses looking to primarily target the B-gaps with their inside run game, stick left no bubbles.
What is most telling about the 2006 Rose Bowl versus Young is that USC spent most of their adjustments trying to pressure and blitz into bear-esque looks, particularly on the final drive.
“Just basically when faced with an opportunity—I have been in these situations before—and it's how you want to dish it out in that situation, how you want to deal with it after,” Carroll answered when asked about the high pressure rates on the last series. “The last thing I want to do is sit back and see what happens. I want to get it and make opportunities. We were trying to fill up the rest of it so that he couldn't escape. He could any time he wanted to earlier in the night, so I thought the best chance was to get that done.”
When Carroll said “fill up the rest of it so that he couldn’t escape,” he was talking about plugging the interior gaps with blitzers. The issue on the 4th and 5, as explained, was the conflicted edge containment of Rucker.
Before Young went off, mobile quarterbacks had already caused problems for the Trojans. In 2002, Kansas State's Ell Roberson racked up 204 total yards—70 of which were on the ground—and four total touchdowns in a 27-20 upset win. Then, Virginia Tech's Bryan Randall tallied 235 total yards and one touchdown in a 24-13 loss, highlighted by a whopping 87 rushing yards on six attempts in the first quarter.
USC’s shift to bear came because the vogue of college football was moving to spread, shotgun and option offenses that utilized a genuine running threat at quarterback. The Pac-12—then Pac-10—was no exception. The 2006 Trojans rolled out a duo of 250-pounder Brian Cushing and 236-pounder Dallas Sartz on the edge in their stick defenses. Various team media guides described USC’s system as a 3-4. Stick became Carroll's go-to solution for spread football.
Even with their stick adaptation, the Trojans still struggled against dual-threats. In 2006, UCLA'S Patrick Cowan rushed for 55 yards and a touchdown in a 13-9 upset win over No. 2-ranked USC. Then, a year later, Orgeon's Dennis Dixon notched 76 yards and a touchdown on the ground in a 24-17 win.
The moment for USC to earn redemption came at the end of the 2007 season, where the 255-pound Clay Matthews joined Cushing off the edges. Fittingly, the No. 6-ranked Trojans returned to the Rose Bowl to face No. 13 Illinois on New Year’s Day in 2008. Quarterbacked by the aptly-named Juice Williams, Illinois was the perfect test for USC’s past lessons. Williams had 774 rushing yards on 150 attempts—a 5.16 yards per carry average, plus seven rushing touchdowns during the regular season.
“Since Pete Carroll arrived, the Achilles’ heel of USC defenses has been playing against quarterbacks who can hoof it, and for the past month the Trojans were determined not to let Illinois quarterback Juice Williams add his name to that list,” reported The Whittier Daily News.
“The Trojans spent most of the game in a bear defense, covering all five Illini linemen and taking away gaps. The ends had to be more cautious, not just rushing up the field to get at the quarterback but making sure they kept Williams in the pocket. And everyone had to keep an eye peeled on the backfield.”
This was the bear design executed to perfection.
“They did a great job of playing us, scheming us up and playing the right defense,” a shell-shocked Williams expressed. “Early on, they shut everything down.”
The Illinois quarterback was sacked five times and confined to -19 yards on the ground. Carroll’s scheme came good for his fifth bowl win—a 49-17 shellacking. He would finish with seven before the Seahawks called in 2010.
With Carroll heading to the NFL, bear returned. It had to. The trickle-up effect of college football was starting to take hold of the professional quarterback position. Swiftly, mobile threats like Robert Griffin III, Colin Kaepernick and Cam Newton caused nightmarish scenarios for NFL defensive coordinators. Defenses required urgent answers for the same zone read concepts that Vince Young and Texas had thrived with. The Seahawks were ready and sprinkled in stick as one solution.
And here we are in 2022: Seattle has gone further, already establishing bear as their 2021 and 2020 defensive base. They have deployed the fronts for a different kind of offensive problem. For the future, Clint Hurtt appears certain to build upon the past to defeat the new NFL spread attacks. The 3-4-conscious Seahawks must now get the balance of play-calling and personnel right.
