Pete Carroll recaps the Seahawks’ Week 1 win over the Bengals

The 2019 Seahawks season is officially underway, which means every Monday brings a new episode of The Pete Carroll Show. Seattle’s head coach joined Brock Huard and Mike Salk on 710 ESPN Seattle Monday morning to recap the Seahawks’ 21-20 win over the Cincinnati Bengals.

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You can listen to Carroll’s full interview in the audio clip embedded above (and subscribe to the Pete Carroll Show here). Here are a few highlights:

Grading the secondary

Seattle’s young secondary was expected to stumble early and the Bengals were able to exploit a few mistakes.

It wasn’t all bad; cornerback Shaquill Griffin earned the fifth-highest grade for a Seahawk (76) from Pro Football Focus. But it was a less stellar outing for free safety Tedric Thompson. Cornerback Tre Flowers also struggled at times and drew a costly penalty, though he also managed to rack up 10 tackles, one pass defended, and forced an incompletion on the play immediately following his defensive pass interference call.

“Tre got worked a little bit just because the coverage gave them a couple comebacks that we were kind of giving up,” Carroll said. “And so he looked like he was playing off and not real close to those, but those were kind of scheme-wise. Unfortunately, he makes a great play down by the goal line and you could call that (pass interference) either way. He’s got contact as he’s making the play. Did he control the guy? The question is: does the defender control the receiver with his touch? You can put your hand on him, but you can’t move him. And I didn’t think he did. I thought he did it exactly the way you want to do it. But they can call it and they did… the ball went his way quite a bit and some of the balls he really couldn’t do a whole lot about.”

Carroll said Thompson’s mistakes were often the result of trying too hard.

“He makes such a bad choice on leaving his feet on the long ball. That’s such a costly play. And that’s something that he doesn’t do; I’ve never seen him do that. But that was a real heartbreaker and I know it took the wind out of his sails.”

Thompson could face competition soon; safeties Lano Hill and Marquise Blair are both working their way back from injury and Hill appears to be close to making a return.

“He deserves a chance to play,” Carroll said of Hill. “He’s a really good ballplayer. We’ll see where he fits into it.”

Injury updates

It sounds as though defensive end Ziggy Ansah and left guard Mike Iupati are close to making a return.

“We’ll just go day to day (with Ansah) and see how it goes,” Carroll said. “I’m really counting that he’ll be able to make it. This was his first week with contact where we could really draw some information on how his shoulder is. He got sore during the week and so he should be better this week and we should count on him playing.”

Carroll offered a vague – though not particularly encouraging – update on defensive tackle Poona Ford and tight end Will Dissly, both of whom exited Sunday’s game with injuries.

“(Ford and Dissly) got something that we’ve got to deal with; we’ve got to figure out what it means.”

Carroll said he doesn’t yet have new information on cornerback Neiko Thorpe (hamstring).

Carroll’s favorite play

Carroll loved the fourth-down stop of Bengals’ running back Giovani Bernard and a tough, 21-yard run by Chris Carson, but neither topped his list of favorite plays.

“My favorite play, really, was Al Woods picking the ball off. And for a moment there he thought he was gone,” Carroll said with a laugh. “He thought he was gonna score. There was, like, no way. There was no chance. But I know that there was a moment there where he though, ‘I’m gonna score!’ and it’s a two-yard run. A great grab though.”

Big man interceptions. You LOVE to see it. Let’s go, Al Woods! #Seahawks #CINvsSEA

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Listen to the Brock and Salk Show weekday mornings from 7-10 a.m. on 710 ESPN Seattle. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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