Seattle should be defensive about recent history

Why has it been so hard for Pete Carroll to make Seattle's defense good again?

On Monday, I focused on the injustice of Pete Carroll's exclusion from a top-10 coaching list because it’s July and the primary activity in football-oriented media is to make lists and/or comment on lists that have been made.

In keeping with that trend, I'm going to focus on the rationale behind Carroll’s exclusion from that particular list because there was one. The author even spelled it out:

“Last year was a lot of good, but defense EPA/Play allowed (his expertise) was still not great for the third year in a row.”

— Trevor Sikkema, @TampaBayTre

Now, I don't find the rationale particularly compelling. More specifically, I don't find the rationale CONSISTENT because if you apply that criteria to, say, Mike Tomlin, I'm not sure how you justify ranking him third.

Wait. I wasn't supposed to be poking more holes in Trevor’s criteria. I was going to expand upon it because what Trevor pointed out is the single most perplexing fact even to a fairly ardent Pete advocate such as myself: Why can’t he make this defense good again?