Salk: I can’t agree with 2 things Pete Carroll said about Seahawks’ season
Jan 3, 2018, 11:09 AM | Updated: 2:06 pm
Pete Carroll said the Seahawks' plan for the run game was thrown off by Chris Carson's injury. (AP)
(AP)
I got a tweet Tuesday night that made me think about two points Seahawks coach Pete Carroll made that day that I simply couldn’t agree with.
I listened to Pete’s interview with @BrockESPN and @TheMikeSalk this morning and heard his normal level of positivity and for the first time in his tenure with the #Seahawks I counted it as a liability.
— chris judd (@judojudd) January 3, 2018
Intense thought. On one hand, I often find myself comforted by Pete and I did again Tuesday. I liked him saying that the Seahawks have already started to transition and that they are never going to deviate from their identity of running the ball. That helped to deal with the way this season ended.
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But he made an injury excuse that was weak, and I didn’t buy his explanation for the Seahawks’ issues with penalties and undisciplined play, either.
• Carroll on injuries impacting the run game: “We had a running game designed around a guy that we were really excited about – you guys were just kind of getting a little inkling of it. We thought we had seen something extraordinary in Chris (Carson), and we thought that was going to be a real opportunity for us to mix Chris and C.J. and those two guys weren’t able to hang in there, so we were reconstructing from that point forward.”
Look, an injury to a seventh-round rookie running back who played in four games should not cripple the identity of a championship contender. And it’s hard for me to say it did, especially when they went 2-2 in the four games that Carson played. Dallas lost Ezekiel Elliott and still had a better running game than the Seahawks. Sorry. If it’s what you do, you better have contingencies. I’m excited for Carson next year and he might be the real deal, but a running game needs to succeed despite an injury like that one. And I have to believe that he doesn’t really believe that excuse. If offensive line coach Tom Cable does not return in 2018 for the Seahawks, that action will speak louder than any words.
• Carroll on penalties and discipline: “I’m pissed about that, man. I’m pissed about it. I really am. It was the factor this year. The degree of difficulty we were dealing with, there wasn’t enough margin and there’s an area there we can get so much better.”
I just don’t understand how Pete can voice his frustration with the sloppiness. What did he do to curb it? Who was disciplined? When was it a point of emphasis? He said himself Tuesday that the things you emphasize tend to be the things you are best at. The Seahawks emphasize protecting and getting the ball and they were good at it. If penalties are that big of a problem, they need to be emphasized and dealt with. He told us he was already working on a plan to deal with it. Good, because that destroyed the Seahawks this year.
