Pete Carroll says Seahawks have been arrogant on…

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For years, Pete Carroll coached Seattle’s Legion of Boom, and the Seahawks were among the NFL’s elite defenses. But Carroll recognizes that Seattle is no longer near the top of the NFL on defense, and it’s time to make changes.

Carroll said the Seahawks have to re-think their approach and be willing to make changes, and not just assume that whatever they want to run is going to work.

“We’ve been a little bit arrogant over the years the way we play defense because we’ve been able to do it,” Carroll said, via Bob Condotta of the Seattle Times. “Just go ahead and play what we want to play. It’s not that time right now. It’s time to keep moving and keep growing.”

Carroll acknowledged that there was a time when the Seahawks’ talent on defense allowed them to run the same Cover Three scheme week in and week out, year in and year out, but that is no longer the case.

“Remember how people just talked about all they do is play three-deep?” Carroll said. “You know, they don’t play anything else, they must be stupid? We were killing it for years, so we just [stayed with it]. The fact that our coordinators went all over the league on both sides of the ball, the offensive guys and the defensive guys, it got harder. It was hard on us. And so we stayed with it, but I just think as I’ve been pecking away at it for really like four years now, with stuff we’ve done subtly and we made a bigger shift last year than we had, to just continue to adjust. Just needed to make it a legitimate shift.”

Clint Hurtt has been promoted to defensive coordinator this offseason with the goal of getting the defense back on track. If the Seahawks’ defense continues to falter and they have another last-place finish in the NFC West, it may be time for a bigger overhaul, and Carroll’s job could be in jeopardy.