Seahawks have ‘our guy’ in Geno Smith. Now the priority is fixing their defense in 3 ways

The Seahawks are set at quarterback.

Pete Carroll made it clear Monday that one, record-setting, Pro Bowl, playoff season after replacing traded Russell Wilson, the Seahawks will, um...ride with Geno Smith for 2023. That is, pending the QB and Seattle finalizing a new contract, of course.

“We’ve got our guy,” Carroll said Monday in his season-ending press conference at team headquarters.

He, Smith and the Seahawks are already looking ahead to next season and beyond at the NFL’s most important position. Carroll reiterated what he said Saturday: the team intends to re-sign Smith for next season and perhaps beyond.

“He’s a big part of why we look to the future as so promising,” Carroll said.

Now about that defense.

That side of the ball subverted Smith’s team records in pass completions (399), attempts (572), yards (4,282) and completion rate (a league-leading 69.8%). The defense that is the reason Seattle had a Pro Bowl quarterback, only the second Seahawks rookie running back to rush for 1,000 yards in Kenneth Walker plus two 1,000-yard receivers in DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett yet were only a .500 team (9-9) that barely got into the playoffs — then got smashed in the first round by the San Francisco 49ers, the rival Seattle remains so far behind for NFC West superiority.

The defense is about to change this offseason. In system. In personnel.

Because it must.

“It’s killing me. It’s killing me. Really, we are going to have to become more dynamic up front,” Carroll said of a defense that allowed San Francisco 505 yards, 181 yards rushing and 41 points Saturday in the wild-card playoff loss to the 49ers — and for much of the season was the worst run defense in franchise history before ending 30th in the NFL allowing more than 151 yards rushing per game.

Carroll said the reason the 49ers are so much better than the Seahawks right now is the defensive front. He described how dominant Nick Bosa and Arik Armstead are with the 49ers’ defensive front. The Seahawks’ coach mentioned how Aaron Donald changes games and causes huge problems for offenses for the division-rival Los Angeles Rams.

Seattle needs more guys on defense that cause huge problems, any size problems, for offenses.

“You’ve to have guys that are factors, effect the opponent in a big way,” Carroll said.

“You’ve got to have issues that you cause for the opponent.”

“We’ve got to get more production out of the guys,” Carroll said of Seattle’s defensive line. “They’ve got to be more of a factor. We need to make that position competitive, if we can.

“We will see what we can do.”

How they will fix the defense

The Seahawks are already plotting to fix their defense, in three ways:

• Through free agency

• The draft

• Changed schemes

Free agency begins in March. Seattle has the ability to play big in it, if it chooses. The Seahawks have the league’s fifth-most salary-cap space for 2023, more than $42.5 million. The 37 players under contract for a 53-man roster in Seattle for next season are the third-fewest in the NFL.

The draft is April 27-29. The Seahawks have four of the top 52 picks.

“This is just one of those moments,” Carroll said of Seattle’s draft Monday morning on Seattle’s KIRO-AM radio. “It’s so rare.

“We are really looking forward to it.”

No wonder.

They have the fifth-overall choice, thanks for Denver sending them that and a second-round pick this year, plus two top choices last year and three players, for Wilson in the massive trade last spring. It’s the highest a playoff team has had a pick in 20 years.

Seattle owns draft capital Carroll and general manager John Schneider have not had previously in 13 years leading the Seahawks.

“It’s just different,” Carroll said. “We are always looking at the top 15 or 20 guys and trying to figure out how they are going to go, to figure out what’s going to fall to you. ...(We) are a little more clear what’s going to happen. We will be more clearly connected to what the opportunities are.

“For John, this is kind of a dream opportunity here. And he’s pumped about it.

“We are wide open to what the options could be, whether it’s players at the top, or whether it’s opportunities to move (in trading the pick or picks). Whatever it is, we’ve done all of it. ...

“So we’re ready for this.”

The Seahawks are also readying to change the defense again by tweaking scheme, to better stop the run.

Before this season, Carroll changed the 4-3, cover-3 zone defense he’d run since the 1970s and in two Super Bowls with Seattle. He, new coordinator Clint Hurtt and associate head coach for defense Sean Desai went to more variations, with more 3-4 schemes. They had outside linebackers as rush ends. They used multiple coverages and blitzes in the back end designed to confuse offenses and quarterbacks.

But they didn’t stop the run.

“We might have shot a little too high for what we tried to do” on defense, Carroll said.

Committing more men to stop the run

The Seahawks often had only two true defensive linemen on the field. That was mainly any two at one time of Shelby Harris, Poona Ford, Al Woods, Quinton Jefferson and until he got hurt last month Bryan Mone.

The other two “linemen” were outside linebackers, Uchenna Nwosu, 35-year-old midseason signing Bruce Irvin, Boye Mafe and Darrell Taylor. None of them are run stoppers. Nwosu led the team in sacks. Taylor, second in sacks, got benched for not being able to set the edge against the run.

Offenses attacked the just two true defensive linemen, usually blocking them with two offensive linemen. Foes had their three other blockers available to lock up Seattle’s linebackers and safeties. Irvin, Nwosu and Taylor often ran themselves out of running plays either too wide or too far outside. That created gaps interior linemen and linebackers could not, would not and did not fill.

See: Christian McCaffrey’s 68-yard run through the right edge of Seattle’s defense in the first quarter of the playoff game Saturday. Irvin took a path so far outside it created a freeway-wide gap lineman Jefferson could not get out to cover. Cody Barton, in his first season starting as an inside linebacker after the team cut All-Pro Bobby Wagner, got blocked easily out of that play by Niners fullback Kyle Jusczyk.

“We just messed it up, and didn’t fit it right,” Carroll said of that play.

“There were too many of those.”

Jefferson had a more succinct way of describing it.

“They whipped our ass,” he said of the 49ers, not just Saturday but it beating the Seahawks by a combined 48-20 in the first two meetings this season.

“They could do whatever they wanted.”

Was some of Seattle’s many issues on defense too few true linemen on the field to slow the run?

“We will commit differently than we did,” Carroll said. “We are going to be committed a little bit different than we did this year, to make sure that we solidify that.

“That’s about as far as I’ll go” divulging that.

One way Carroll indicated 2023 will be different is how Seattle uses defensive lineman Poona Ford. He was the team’s highest cost off its salary cap this past season, at more than $10 million. But he did not produce near that status or cost.

Carroll said the Seahawks overused Ford in 2022. The coach likes Ford over the center, at nose tackle. The team played him more outside as 3-technique tackle between the guard and tackle and even 5-technique end at times.

“I think we wore him down,” Carroll said.

So expect Ford back over the nose, among other changes to the run defense next season.

Carroll said the defense needs the right mix of refined scheme and changed players or roles, that its seeking “the right blend that works for us.”

“We didn’t play well enough,” Carroll said of the defense in a Seahawks surprising 2022 season that could have been more. “We just didn’t do it well enough. There were just too many things that we didn’t get sharp at. ...The consistency just wasn’t there.

“And I totally have to own that. This is me not getting it right fast enough. We can fix some problems, we are good at doing that, but then we weren’t complete at getting issues solved. We weren’t as clean as we needed to be as the line of scrimmage. We didn’t fit as well as we needed to. ...

“The inconsistencies, that’s the part I have to really be effective in helping. We have to clean things up. We have to get sharper. We have to get back to where we can effectively play the running game.”

Coaching staff to stay intact

Desai interviewed with the Cleveland Browns Monday about becoming their new defensive coordinator. The Browns and Carroll confirmed that.

Desai, who has a Ph. D. in education, was the coordinator of the Chicago Bears’ defense in 2021. Carroll lured him 11 months ago to Seattle to work again with former college Hurtt on installing Seattle’s new defense.

Carroll was as definitive as he’s been since arriving to lead the Seahawks in January 2010 about keeping his coaching staff intact for the next season.

“We are staying with our guys,” he said. “Yeah, we are solid.”