Has the NFC West leaped Pete Carroll’s Seahawks? Brock & Salk react to Colin Cowherd’s opinion
Dec 20, 2017, 10:47 AM | Updated: 11:13 am
Both the Rams and 49ers may have jumped past Pete Carroll's Seahawks. (AP)
(AP)
The Big Lead’s Ryan Glasspiegel isn’t the only one pointing the finger at Pete Carroll after the Seahawks’ 42-7 loss to the Rams. And while FOX Sports’ Colin Cowherd didn’t necessarily call for Carroll to be fired, he likened the Seahawks’ struggles to the downfall of USC.
Cowherd drew parallels between both team, saying USC was a dominant program until two offensive powerhouses emerged in Jim Harbaugh’s Stanford Cardinal and Chip Kelly’s Oregon Ducks. USC failed to replicate the success of prior years, and the program eventually flamed out. Cowherd asserts that, like USC, the Seahawks’ dominance is being tested by two real threats in Sean McVay’s Rams and a 49ers team rejuvenated at quarterback.
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710 ESPN Seattle’s Brock Huard isn’t buying the argument on its face, though, and says the differences between college and pro football are too numerous to draw that type of comparison.
“I think the college game is so massively different than the NFL,” Huard said on Brock and Salk Wednesday morning. “I think there was the Reggie Bush-NCAA deal going on at that time that played as big a role in the end as Chip Kelly and Jim Harbaugh were coming into the league. I think that that was an awfully big factor as well. I have a hard time looking at something over a decade ago or so and saying, ‘Yeah, just as it ended there in a hurry, it can come off the rails that quickly here in Seattle.’ I have a hard time making that jump from the college and pro game.”
Mike Salk noted that, to Carroll’s credit, both Kelly and Harbaugh failed to find the kind of success in the NFL that Carroll did with Seattle.
Still, Salk finds some validity to Cowherd’s argument.
“I think his specifics may be off, but that doesn’t mean that the bigger point is,” Salk said. “When watching that game on Sunday, it looks like the Seahawks got lapped. It looks like the Rams are the better team and the 49ers look like they are growing and they’ve got a good young quarterback. And so all of a sudden, the balance of power – which for the last few years has been Seattle and Arizona – (is askew). Arizona’s done, and Seattle may or may not be behind them. It’s up to them. They still have a quarterback, and that’s the thing that Colin can’t take out of this. The Seahawks still have the best quarterback in this division, I really believe that.”
Instead, Salk said he feels the fault in the Carroll-led Seahawks current approach isn’t necessarily an inability to compete with burgeoning offensive threats, but instead, it’s a lack of willingness to make tough choices when it comes to personnel.
Both Brock and Salk think there are solutions to the Seahawks’ struggles that don’t involve cutting ties with Carroll. Listen to the entire debate, embedded above.
