Pete Carroll’s first Seahawks change for 2022: firing defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr.

Pete Carroll’s loyalty to Ken Norton Jr. has reached its limit.

Carroll has fired Norton, the Seahawks’ defensive coordinator of the last four seasons. The team announced the move Tuesday, nine days after Seattle finished its first losing season since 2011.

The move ends a coaching partnership Carroll began with Norton in 2004. That year Carroll gave the former All-Pro and Super Bowl-champion linebacker his first coaching job as USC’s linebackers coach.

The Seahawks also announced they “parted ways” with Andre Curtis, the Seahawks’ defensive passing game coordinator the last years Norton has been leading the overall defense.

Carroll and the Seahawks might wait to decide on Norton’s replacement until they assess the NFL’s seven coaching vacancies— and the assistant positions that go with them — plus an interim-coach situation in Las Vegas. If the Raiders decide to hire a new coach and staff, Gus Bradley, Carroll’s first defensive coordinator in Seattle from 2010-12, would likely be available for re-hire. Bradley was the Raiders’ defensive coordinator this past season.

Carroll’s first change for 2022 is at the top of Seattle’s defense that ranked 28th overall this past season and next-to-last, 31st, in yards passing allowed.

Carroll said at season’s end the top priority for his defense was to get a more consistently effective pass rush, to get opposing offenses off the field more often on third downs. Seattle has been last in the NFL in plays on defense in each of the last two seasons (70.6 plays per game by opposing offenses in 2021 and 69.6 the previous year).

This past season, the Seahawks essentially benched their most accomplished sack man on the defensive line, Carlos Dunlap, late in the season. Dunlap played just 17 then four snaps in Seattle’s consecutive losses to Arizona and Washington in November that essentially eliminated the Seahawks from the playoffs. Dunlap had a sack while playing just seven snaps in a win over San Francisco on Dec. 5.

“He’s certainly a guy that when he’s on the field, he makes an impact,” Norton said in mid-December.

That made the fact Dunlap was playing less more puzzling.

Dunlap finished the season with a team-leading 8-1/2 sacks. He went from 15 in the final home game against Detroit to 43 snaps on defense in the season finale, when Dunlap had two sacks of Kyler Murray at Arizona.

The 70-year-old Carroll is a former defensive back, defensive backs coach and defensive coordinator. He has been a defense-first coach his entire career. In Seattle it’s been Carroll’s defense, called in games by Norton.

Carroll brought Norton with him from USC to coach the Seahawks linebackers beginning in 2010. Norton was Bobby Wagner’s first position coach in the NFL, and the coach and player have developed a strong bond.

Wagner said late last month he knows there will be changes to the Seahawks following a 7-10 season. The 31-year-old All-Pro linebacker is entering the final season of his contract in 2022.

The relationship between Norton and Wagner has been obvious at practices, games and around the team facility for most of the last decade. Wagner remained close with Norton while the coach was gone from the Seahawks for three seasons, 2015-17, in his first coordinator job leading the Oakland Raiders’ defense.

At a practice in Seahawks training camp last summer, Wagner playfully shadow boxed Norton. The coach’s father, Ken Norton, was a heavyweight champion of the world in the 1970s who broke Muhammad Ali’s jaw in a bout.

The Seahawks began the last two seasons giving up historical amounts of points and yards, particularly by opposing quarterbacks throwing against pillow-soft coverage in an ever-changing, post-Legion of Boom secondary. Seattle was allowing more than 450 yards per game again this September.

That was after blown leads and consecutive losses to Tennessee 33-30 in overtime and at Minnesota 30-17. The Seahawks allowed a staggering 532 yards by the Titans in Seattle on Sept. 19.

The next weekend following the Vikings game, then-starting cornerback Tre Flowers was questioning Carroll’s and Norton’s schemes. Carroll and Norton drafted Flowers in 2018.

Flowers suggested confusion and uncertainty existed between the players and what the coaches were calling for in coverage schemes.

“There’s a little gray area right now amongst a couple people,” he said. “And I’ll fix it or someone else will fix it. We don’t know yet.

“I’ve got a couple questions myself.”

Two weeks later, the Seahawks released Flowers. He is now playing for the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC playoffs.

Sidney Jones replaced Flowers as a starting cornerback. Dunlap went on a sacking spree to jump-start the Seahawks’ pass rush, as he’d done the previous season after his trade from Cincinnati. Seattle’s defense rallied again late in the season. The Seahawks held Aaron Rodgers and the NFC-best Packers to 17 points in Green Bay, Houston to 13 points, Washington to 17 and the NFC West-champion Rams to 20.

Yet the Seahawks kept giving up yards. They routinely could not get off the field on third down. That didn’t always result in points allowed, but in long drives against Seattle. That, in turn, limited opportunities for Russell Wilson and the Seahawks offense that needed more chances to succeed.

Seattle finished this past season 11th in the NFL in points allowed at 21.5 per game but 28th in yards (379.1). The Seahawks did not make the playoffs for just the second time in 10 years. Seattle had its first losing season since 2011 and most losses since 2009. That ‘09 season ended two weeks before the team hired Carroll to overhaul it.

The yards in 2021 were the most allowed in Carroll’s 12 seasons as Seattle’s coach, and second-most in team history. Only the 2001 team allowed more (399 yards per game).

In assessing the season last week, Carroll said the day after the team won at Arizona in the regular-season finale the Seahawks’ defense needed to fix its slow starts to seasons. Before what became his final game coaching the defense, Norton acknowledged that.

“The main thing is getting off to a better start. We started off kind of slow. A lot of times you put yourself in a position where you have to dig yourself out of a hole,” Norton said Jan. 5. “For the most part, the guys really rallied and played really solid defense. ...

“We just want to do a better job of contributing and getting the ball back to the offense. We’d like to get more turnovers, obviously would like to get more sacks. There’s always things we can improve on.”

He said not having the usual amount of organized team activities and offseason practices with the players to install the defense, because of the league’s COVID-19 restrictions, was a factor in the defense starting so poorly in 2020 and ‘21.

“If I look at this year and even last year, I think it’s the early start, just getting a stronger start as far as passing yards,” Norton said. “Everything is about total yards. We have been outstanding in situational ball, but coming out of the chutes really, really strong, I think it’s very important that we get some offseason work in mini-camps and training camps.”

Norton was widely seen as the reason the Seahawks’ defense was so bad to begin 2020. Then when the defense improved and Seattle won the NFC West with a 12-4 record, Wagner said Norton deserved the credit for the defense’s turnaround.

“I would like to hear the positive just as loud as the negative,” Wagner said late in that 2020 season.

“He deserves a lot of praise. He’s a big reason for why we’re able to change it around, and I would like to hear a little bit more positivity.”

Two weeks ago, Norton was asked what he saw the future of the Seahawks being for 2022.

“My job is to coach,” he said, “and that’s what I’m going to do is continue to coach.

“The other stuff is out of my control.”

Curtis, 45, has been on Carroll’s Seahawks staff since 2015, when the head man hired him to be the assistant secondary coach focused on safeties. He became the defensive backs coach in 2017 and passing game coordinator for the defense a year later.