INDIANAPOLIS – Every year when a team wins the Super Bowl there seems to be a lot of offseason talk about trying to emulate the style of the champs. In Seattle's case, the big, physical cornerbacks have caught the attention of many who watched Richard Sherman & Co. shut down the Broncos historic offense.
Seattle head coach Pete Carroll has a message for those folks who would like to use the Seahawks blueprint: go ahead and try.
Carroll has long been a proponent of big, physical corners who like to play the bump-and-run style, but the former Patriots boss says such players aren't easy to find. When asked if he thought team would try to copy the Seahawks style, Carroll shot it down in a hurry.
"No, because they don't exist," he said. "Big, fast guys are the fewest people around. Everybody would like to get longer, taller guys who run 4.4 but there just aren't very many humans like that in the world. The perfect guys aren't there because there are no exceedingly tall, fast guys other than [Lions wideout]Calvin[Johnson] and a handful of others, so you have to make those guys come to life through your coaching and how you adapt their style and ability to fit it.
"We've been doing it for a long time because we've had such a commitment to bump-and-run, press corners. This goes back 20 years so it's not new for us. But it's rare that you can find them. When we had Brandon [Browner] and Richard playing, you can't get any longer than that. OK, let's go do that. Well, there are no players like that. Look at this draft, there are only a couple of guys over 6-1.
"So, I'd love for people to try to copy that. Get a bunch of tall players out there."
Listening to Carroll talk about his history of looking for tall, fast corners immediately brought to mind Tebucky Jones. Carroll and personnel director Bobby Grier used a first-round pick on Jones in 1998, hoping the 6-2, 220-pound safety out of Syracuse could make the transition to corner.
Despite some obvious physical gifts, Jones never materialized as a corner and eventually had a few productive seasons at safety with the Patriots before moving on to New Orleans and Miami to close out a eight-year career.
