Pete Carroll could have glossed over or dismissed the chart showing just how run-heavy his team became last season. Instead, the Seattle Seahawks’ coach used the data to launch a conversation about football philosophy, one of his favorite subjects. Carroll embraced the discussion of a topic that some Seattle fans remain fixated upon.
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Are the Seahawks hopelessly behind the times in their relative aversion to passing? Alternatively, does Carroll’s superior understanding of his team and the game validate an approach that is increasingly an outlier in the 32-team NFL?
The chart presented to Carroll earlier this offseason showed the 2018 Seahawks passing the ball less frequently than any NFL team since the 2011 Denver Broncos (Tim Tebow!) when the choice to run or pass was unquestionably theirs. To identify those situations, first and second downs during the first 28 minutes of games seemed ideal. That time frame eliminated the final two minutes of first halves, when teams often hurry to score or milk the clock. It also eliminated second halves, when score differential increasingly influences play-calling.
The numbers would have made Chuck Knox proud in 1973. Seattle passed 35 percent of the time in those neutral situations last season. The league average was 50 percent. The Seahawks’ passing rate would have been even lower if Carroll had not waited until Week 3 to implement a run-heavy approach after an 0-2 start. By our criteria, the Seahawks were the pass-happiest team in Week 1, which Carroll wasn’t going to tolerate.
Seattle’s tendency toward running became so extreme over the course of the 2018 season that analytically inclined observers applied the acronym “RRP” to the offense — run on first down, run on second and pass on third, mostly out of obligation. By the time Seattle suffered a 24-22 defeat at Dallas in the wild-card round, a panel of retired fullbacks from the 1970s plausibly could have hoped for another pass or two.
Back to the chart, which appears below. Carroll leaned forward in his chair and brought it into focus before him. The Seahawks’ 10th-year coach clearly was interested in addressing the subject. This was about to get good.
The philosophy
“Let’s go back, let me answer your question,” Carroll said after our conversation had gone in a couple of different directions. He pointed on the chart to Seattle’s 2013 and 2014 Super Bowl seasons, when the team leaned heavily toward the run but not as heavily as last season. Carroll suggested that is where the Seahawks would prefer to be, closer to 40-45 percent pass in those neutral situations.
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“Why is the running game such a big deal?” Carroll asked, picking up where he left off. “It is not because we just want to knock our head against a wall. It is because the game is played well when you don’t give the other team the football. The game is played well when you can convert and make first downs. The game is played well when you can explode on offense.”
There is irony in Carroll defending his approach against charges of being stuck in the past. When the Seahawks hired him in 2010, critics questioned whether Carroll’s college enthusiasm and new-age reputation would translate to the NFL. Nearly a decade later, Carroll is the winningest coach in Seahawks history. The only NFL teams to win a higher percentage of their games since Carroll took over in Seattle were the ones that already had Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger and Aaron Rodgers as their quarterbacks.
Critics raise different objections today. They’re convinced Carroll’s allegiance to the running game is holding back the Seahawks and wasting an upper-tier quarterback in a league increasingly ruled by the play-action pass. It’s an easy argument to win on a spreadsheet. Passing adds so much more than rushing in terms of yardage, points, expected points and so on. It’s increasingly accepted that offenses need not run the ball frequently or effectively to succeed with play-action passes. Presenting the threat of the run is the key.
Coaches who suggest otherwise can become targets, although some in the NFL’s analytics community think the conflict is exaggerated.
“The phrase ‘establish the run’ has probably mischaracterized many coaches,” an NFL team’s analytics director said. “I don’t think they literally mean, ‘This is the script: run, run, run, run, pass.’ Their goal is to run for positive yardage and make a defense commit to all gaps up front, which helps to create space downfield and make pass rushers less certain. Coaches are aware that it doesn’t take five consecutive runs to create those advantages. There is less disagreement than people think. Every run-game enthusiast I’ve met also loves a good play pass.”
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Not that a little pushback would deter Carroll, whose college and pro teams have posted a 218-104-1 record (.680) in his 22 seasons as a head coach. His .563 winning percentage in New England, where Carroll was widely considered a failure, is higher than the career win rates for Pro Football Hall of Fame coaches Marv Levy, Sid Gillman and Weeb Ewbank.
“What does it take to get the offensive style that allows you to take care of the football on a regular basis and be able to explode?” Carroll continued. “Our whole thing is to be able to explode in the passing game. It is not about the running game explosions. That is the steady part of it.”
Cue Vince Lombardi.
“We are as much like the old Packers as you can get,” Carroll said. “There is nothing wrong with that.”
A record streak
Carroll’s formula is straight out of the defensive-minded head coach’s playbook: run the ball to reduce turnovers and (ideally) to promote manageable third-down distances, while enabling explosive pass plays to change field position and score points.
Carroll credited this approach for helping Seattle go 95 consecutive games without losing by more than 10 points. That streak, which ended in 2016, is the longest in league history by 21 games. The 1920-25 Chicago Bears own the second-longest streak at 74 games, according to Pro Football Reference.
“That is not all about rushing,” Carroll said. “That has to do with everything. A lot goes into that.”
Carroll’s Seahawks enter the 2019 season riding another 19-game run of such games, tied for the NFL’s second-longest streak despite the Seahawks having overhauled their roster.
“The one part Pete is leaving out of that equation is you have to have a good defense,” a different NFL analytics director said.
Carroll actually did address that part.
“The defense always has to be great,” he said.
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Passing more on early downs: an old idea
A general manager I visited this offseason foresees a future when teams pass 70 percent of the time on first down in neutral situations. At his suggestion, we looked at first downs in the first three quarters of games, excluding the final two minutes of first halves. Teams passed in these situations at about the same rate last season (54 percent) as they have every season since at least 2000.
As analytically minded football voices grow louder in saying teams should throw more on first down in particular, a look back in NFL history shows this is a very old idea, one that gained momentum after the league changed rules to enable passing after the 1977 season.
“Pittsburgh is blessed with options, run or pass,” the New York Times reported in 1979, “but in some games … it has reversed the old cliche of establishing the running game to set up the pass. With Terry Bradshaw’s threatening passes to John Stallworth and Lynn Swann, the Steelers now set up the pass to establish the running of Franco Harris, their steamroller.”
The same 1979 article noted that the late Hall of Fame coach Hank Stram, then a game analyst for CBS, kept urging the New England Patriots to pass first in a game against the Miami Dolphins.
“Stram was right,” reporter William Wallace wrote at the time, “because he recognized that the pass rather than the run had become the dominant play in pro football under the best circumstances. It always had been under the worst circumstances. Football was turning upside down.”
Again, this was in 1979, the year Kliff Kingsbury was born, not at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference six months ago.
When the Dallas Cowboys defeated the Buffalo Bills 52-17 in the 1993 Super Bowl, quarterback Troy Aikman completed 10 of 11 passes for 143 yards and four touchdowns on first down. One of my favorite football writers, the late Bob Oates of the Los Angeles Times, picked up on the trend, applauding that Cowboys performance.
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“Most football people overrate third down and the much-publicized third-down conversion rate,” Oates wrote in 2005. “In reality, the most significant down is first down, which, if handled effectively, can keep an offense from facing many third downs.”
Oates criticized the Indianapolis Colts of the early 2000s for running heavily on early downs when they could have maximized Peyton Manning’s passing prowess. Oates loved the Mike Martz-coached St. Louis Rams, who from 2000-02 passed more frequently on early downs in the first 28 minutes than any NFL team has done over the latest three-year block (2016-18).
NFL offenses set records for scoring and efficiency last season. The gains were limited to early downs. Third-down production actually got worse. As teams passed more effectively on early downs, they faced fewer third-down plays, but when they did reach third down, they tended to need more yards to gain a first down, typically after incompletions.
Seahawks are a major outlier
Oates, like the analytics community today, increasingly saw football as a race for the lead. This was because, in a league designed for parity, teams that scored first won 60 to 70 percent of the time, depending on whether they scored field goals or touchdowns. That advantage endures. Passing is the fastest way to score, so why not pass more in the early going?
Because … Carroll’s Seahawks do not have to?
As noted at the outset, the 2018 Seahawks were the run-heaviest team on early downs in the first 28 minutes since the Tebow-led 2011 Broncos. Carroll’s harshest critics called this a waste of a talented quarterback and borderline malpractice. On the other hand, check out where Seattle ranked last season during those exceedingly run-heavy first 28 minutes of games:
- First in fewest turnovers (two)
- Second in EPA per pass attempt (.29)
- Fourth in explosive pass rate (20.9 percent)
- Fifth in offensive points per game (11.7)
- Sixth in third-down EPA per play (.24)
- Ninth in total offensive EPA (4.0)
The Seahawks also ranked tied for first in opponent turnovers collected (13) during the first 28 minutes of those games, which benefited their offense.
However, Seattle ranked among the top 10 in gross offensive EPA through 28 minutes, suggesting turnovers weren’t the whole story. The Seahawks were 9-0 when leading after 28 minutes. Only New England (10-1), Houston (10-0) and Kansas City (8-2) led more frequently at that point in games.
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“Pete’s frame of mind is, ‘We get the explosives because of the running plays and the play-action,” an NFL team’s analytics director said. “My argument is, no, you get explosives because Russell Wilson is really good. He is really talented. The play-action helps, but Russell is making plays that other quarterbacks cannot make, including when he runs around.”
Easier for the QB? Maybe not
Wilson was one of eight quarterbacks to achieve Tier 1 status when I polled 55 coaches and evaluators this offseason. The other seven played for teams that passed 57 percent of the time on early downs in the first 28 minutes. None of those seven passed less than 53 percent of the time in those situations. Seattle, 32nd and last by a wide margin at 35 percent, was at the bottom with teams quarterbacked by Blake Bortles, Marcus Mariota and Josh Allen.
“A lot of defensive coaches want to play old-school like that,” an offensive coordinator said. “They think it helps a quarterback, but it doesn’t. You face more third downs. For a quarterback to execute against a third-down defense with tight man-to-man coverage, pressures, different looks, it’s really hard. Seattle is fortunate to have a really, really good quarterback that can do that and also can get out of issues with his feet and athleticism.”
Last season, Seattle faced third-and-4 or longer on 17 percent of plays in the first 28 minutes, well above the 13 percent rate for the other seven teams with quarterbacks voted into Tier 1 this year. Seattle was still fifth in offensive points per game during the first 28 minutes.
“It really doesn’t matter that the outside world is saying, ‘Oh, my God, Mahomes and Goff are throwing it more!’ ” this offensive coordinator added. “Pete has set up his team the way he wants to set it up. He also has an unbelievable quarterback who can get you out of a lot of stuff.”
Wilson entered the NFL in 2012. Despite his Tier 1 status, some coaches and evaluators think he’s better as a deep-ball thrower and off-schedule creator than he would be if asked to lead an offense predicated on frequent timing passes. Others disagree and think Seattle could be getting more for its $35 million-a-year money.
“Seattle is probably underutilizing the guy (Wilson), but I’m not there, seeing how he sees things,” a different offensive coordinator said. “Their Dallas game in the playoffs, that was hard to watch. They were playing good defense, playing so patient. The formula was there. You just say, ‘When are you going to try to win the game?’ Maybe they didn’t think they could pass-block them. The game stayed close, but they never asserted themselves.”
Since Wilson became a starter in 2012, nine teams have finished a season ranked among the top 20 percent in all three of the following categories:
- run-heaviness on early downs in the first 28 minutes
- explosive pass rate
- fewest turnovers on plays from scrimmage
Five of those nine teams were Carroll-coached Seattle teams. The other four included Washington (2012), Minnesota (2015), Tennessee (2018) and Houston (2018). All nine had winning records. Two of the Seattle teams reached the Super Bowl.
I wondered how many teams over the same period ranked just as high in explosive pass rate and fewest turnovers while residing at the other end of the run-pass continuum, among the top 20 percent in passing rate on early downs, early in games. There were four such teams, all with top quarterbacks: New England with Tom Brady twice (2017, 2018), the Chargers with Philip Rivers (2018) and the Atlanta Falcons with Matt Ryan (2016, his MVP season).
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What lies ahead for Seattle
Seattle became more run-oriented beginning in 2011, when Carroll got his offensive staff settled. That trend reversed some in 2016 and 2017 as the Seahawks adjusted to life without lead back Marshawn Lynch. Injuries to Wilson and various Lynch replacements led Seattle away from Carroll’s formula. Those two seasons were the Seahawks’ worst for offensive points per game and EPA per pass attempt since Wilson’s arrival.
“We would like to be back where we were before that in terms of the running game,” Carroll said, pointing to how frequently his teams ran the ball during the Super Bowl years. “It does not have to be way up here like it was last season.”
That should come as some relief to Carroll’s critics. We might, in retrospect, view the 2018 season as Carroll overcorrecting so that Seattle could reclaim its identity after a couple of seasons out of its comfort zone. Keeping the rate of explosive passes high and the turnovers low matters the most — more than specifically how Seattle achieves those key components. Carroll doesn’t need a fancy chart to tell you that.
(Photo: Shane Roper / USA Today Sports)
