The Way of It, Part Three: A Series of Fictitious Conversations Demonstrating the Evolution of Football Strategy

 Seattle, 2010.

John Schneider’s usual television-star smile is absent as he sits in the coffee shop of the highest building in Seattle. He is grumbling to himself over his latte. 

"Over the years, the Seahawks have developed one of the worst win-loss records in the NFL. We’ve only been in the playoffs a couple times. There was a twenty-year stretch when we couldn’t even win a playoffs game. We managed one or two good years but now… ugh.”

Raindrops streak the big glass windows that offer a panoramic view of the city. 

“Bring in the next guy in for the coaching job,” Schneider tells his assistant. “Not that it will make any difference."

A man with a narrow face and white hair walks into the coffee shop. He is sixty years old but moves like a man thirty years younger as he grabs his chair.

Seattleites on their lunch break barely glance at the two men. They are more interested in the view out the big windows and in acquiring an afternoon coffee to shake off the lethargy of the rainy afternoon. Most of them are only vaguely aware that their city has a football team.  

After Schneider goes over Pete Carroll’s resume, he announces, "You’ve played in the NFL before. You’ve won some games in your coaching career, especially lately, at USC. The job is yours. You’ll want the computers with all our data, since all the teams are using match-ups and statistics.”

Carroll nods polite thanks but looks Schneider in the eye. "I am going to take the Seahawks back to a very old tradition. Sure, I’ll look at the numbers, but in my mind football is not really about match-ups and statistics because it is not played by individuals. Football is a team sport."

"That's… nice," Schneider looks dubious.

"The thing is, the match-up coaches and the statistics coaches lack a philosophy. They just keep talking about 'adjustments' from week to week."

"That's their job, isn't it?"

"No.” Carroll leans forward across the table and gestures with his hands as he explains, “A coach's job is to set up a system that stays the same and that accomplishes things a certain way. Once I get the guys who can work in my system, and once they get good at it, they will win games."

“Then people will know your tendencies and they will find match-ups." Schneider mimics Carroll’s tone.

"They will try. Meanwhile, I use my system to remove match-ups altogether, and I use my system to stress the opponent's system. Since the other team doesn't have a system, or doesn't understand their system as well as we do, they will break down first. Hopefully before the game is over," Carroll says with a wry grin.

"Again, that sounds very nice but I don't get it."

"Think it through. The other team wants a match-up. Let’s pretend they have Lawrence Taylor on their team. They want to match him against our left tackle, who is a slow guy. L.T. is the greatest of all time. He'd always get the better of our left tackle in a match-up but if we use my system, the match-up won’t be there. Our left tackle is going to let him go and do something else." 

"It’ll be mayhem." Schneider looks nervous even thinking about this. "Lawrence Taylor will put our quarterback in the hospital."

But Carroll’s eyes are twinkling. "They’ll think so too. But he won’t, because we run an option. We make a play that forces their L.T. to make an instant choice. He can make a good choice if he knows exactly where his teammates are and what they are supposed to be doing, who they’re covering, and he can trust that they’ll handle that. But he doesn't know for sure where they are, since his team changes everything from week to week and even quarter to quarter as they search for match-ups. L.T. can’t possibly keep track of all that and he knows it. So he’ll just go where his momentum takes him. Or maybe he’ll hesitate. Either way he’ll make the wrong choice often.”

“Often enough to win games?”

“Yes sir. The truth is that in an increasingly complex game that has twenty-two players running around on the field, the most valuable thing is teamwork. My players don’t have to keep a lot of numbers and adjustments in their heads. All they have to do is know where their teammates will be at every second of a play.”

Carroll pauses significantly, as if to underline his statement: “And by the way, we don't match up one man against another. We accomplish tasks in groups, by zones."

"Even blocking?"

"Especially blocking. If I have guys who build up experience in my system, we can beat a team of players that is better than we are at every position. We can move four blockers into a zone where only two defenders are. Their L.T. might be great but he and his buddy will be hard pressed to hold off four of our guys who know just how to work together. Our players learn how to accomplish these tasks by drawing on the wisdom and experience that we have built up with each other within our system. Yes, in time it won’t be my system, but theirs as well.”

"So you won't make adjustments?” Schneider is nonplussed. “At halftime all great coaches make adjustments. The more you can change and adjust at halftime, the better coach you are. I mean, Bill Belichick makes big adjustments all game long. At halftime he practically reinvents his team if he is losing."

Pete Carroll smiles and shakes his head. “If I did that it would throw off my whole system. Those things are a distraction for the players.  Imagine a team that keeps changing what they do every week, alright? Imagine them trying to beat our guys who draw upon the accumulated wisdom of using a system for a year. While their guys start over and over each game with constant adjustments, my guys are learning to play for each other."

“So,” Schneider says slowly, “At halftime we will remind our

players of what they already know. We remind them of how certain aspects of the system flow to accomplish what they need to do. If you’re right, then after a year of playing together they could practically win games without us there.” Schneider chuckles. His television-star smile is back. “So Pete, what kind of quarterback do you want?”

Yes, now Pete Carroll must choose a quarterback for his new iteration of the Seattle Seahawks. A sleepy-eyed young man with a great throwing arm catches his eye. The problem? This Wilson kid is under six feet tall and just over 200 pounds with all his gear on. He can throw, he is fast, he is athletic… but what does the new coach say when he's trying to justify why he wants this kid, who has been passed over by virtually everybody else, to the point that other teams draft punters before they pick him? Why this kid? Why not someone else with similar statistics?

"I watched him interact with the players on my team. Russell had only been there one afternoon, but everybody wanted to listen to him. He brought out the best in them and they accepted him as a leader. That was when I knew he was the one." (While the rest of our conversation was fictitious, that last is a real quote from a Pete Carroll interview.)

 *******

Sure, Carroll looks for ratings and stats. He definitely looks for talent. However, he is also looking for a “fit” more than most coaches in the current era of the NFL. Fans can reel off countless instances of Carroll picking up players who did not do well on other teams, but transplanting them into his system and encouraging them to flourish. Marshawn Lynch is probably the most spectacular example.

There is a reason why the match-ups that the announcers talk about very rarely go the way they are “supposed” to against Seattle. For example, during the Playoffs last year, Green Bay could not take advantage of a match-up against Sherman after he was injured and essentially playing with one arm. Seattle plays zone so often and in such a way that the match-ups either aren’t there or are so blurry as to be useless. The offense does not know where Sherman will go. He usually does not follow one guy around or even go to the same place on the field.

A notable exception, of course, was the man-to-man coverage against Dez Bryant in the Cowboys game. Bryant is good enough to warrant full time man-coverage by Sherman, but usually Sherm is such a terror because he is “flying around.” His teammates know the system and know where he will be at any given time. However, to outsiders, the Seattle defense often looks like swirling chaos. It helps that they switch men in and out of the zones fairly often, too. The Legion of Boom all know where their players are, but the offense is often baffled and caught off guard.

All of this organic changing and swirling may be part of the reason why Seattle gets caught with twelve men on the field so often it is becoming a running joke, though.

Anyway, the same system holds true for the Seahawks on blocking. Someone watching the game can never be never sure who the Seattle linemen will block. If you watch the replays, you will see that the linemen are usually not aiming at a particular person. No, they are headed to an area. They trade off opponents as needed so it is difficult to pick on one of them. This is, of course, 'zone blocking' and takes a long time to learn because it is absolutely critical for one lineman to know where his teammates are and what they are capable of.

Zone blocking is terrible when there is miscommunication, the way we saw earlier this season. When it works, though, it is beautiful to behold.

Now we look at our fictitious Pete Carroll. What we left out of our portrayal is that "the system" is not merely a variety of plays. Carroll has taken a lifetime of coaching and reflection and then he created a concept or philosophy. Next he had to figure out what aspects of play worked with his concept and which ones did not. I'm sure there were some great ideas that he had to pare away because they did not work with the concept (every editor knows how that feels). So a system emerges.  

Now, it isn't like Carroll doesn’t study the other teams or look at tendencies. Certainly, he has work to do each week in that area, but he does not switch up the entire style of play from week to week.

Then he had to flesh out his system with personnel. This too must have been a difficult process because his idea runs against the "common sense" of the NFL. Carroll passed up guys who looked slightly better on match-ups in order to draft people who fit the system. Then he had to teach the players how the system works. Then he had to get in their heads and make them believe in it, which was one reason he absolutely had to find a quarterback who had a firm belief in the system and could inspire it in others. 

Win Forever.

___

"The Way of It" is a collaborative effort between Ada Fetters and Michael Howard.