Gallant: Seahawks’ offense must get Chris Carson more involved

We’ve nearly had a week to process the Seahawks’ offensive struggles against the New York Giants. And over those days, we’ve heard a variety of reasons for them, straight from the makers.

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“We were confident in how they were playing, and kept thinking we were going to make it,” said Pete Carroll to us on Monday’s Pete Carroll Show. “It was a little bit of stubbornness on our part to stay with it. We thought we were going to gash them here or there. We weren’t able to make those plays come to life.”

“We adjusted later on,” said Russell Wilson when asked if the offense is off track. “A little too late it felt like.”

“I probably could have adjusted a little bit better,” said Brian Schottenheimer of the performance. “Thrown some more of the underneath stuff.”

They went into Sunday’s game with the expectation they’d be able to throw the ball deep. They weren’t able to do that, and never really adjusted their offense. Even though there may have been a fairly obvious adjustment: to run the football against a team keeping both its safeties back.

Earlier this season, a 12-point performance wouldn’t have us wondering if the Seahawks offense is broken. An offense scoring at the rate they were is bound to regress to the mean, no matter what this dummy might have said. But it’s been months since Russell Wilson and the Seahawks offense were terrifying the NFL.

How can they get back to where they were? My solution? Find more ways to get Chris Carson the football. Handoffs. Screens. Check downs. If you want to win, let Chris spin.

He averaged 4.75 yards a touch on his 315 combined carries and receptions last season. And while I like the pass-centric direction the Seahawks’ offense has gone this year, he’s been even better when healthy this year. He’s had the ball in his hands 114 times this year, and is averaging a whopping 5.6 yards per touch.

I’m of the belief that the Seahawks would have beaten the Packers and their wretched run defense in the playoffs last season with a healthy Chris Carson. After all, Green Bay allowed nearly 300 yards to the 49ers in the NFC Championship. So should Seattle return to the postseason in 2020, they need to make sure that Carson’s healthy. With that in mind, I understood why the Hawks had him on a pitch count against the Eagles and Giants.

I can’t speak to how Chris Carson was feeling before those games. Here’s what Pete Carroll said after Sunday’s loss.

“He’s making it to the game,” said Pete during his Sunday press conference. “His foot is still sore but he can play. He looked good. But it’s just not 100%. So we’re trying to not overload him … but he’s not to the point where we can just let him stay out there and keep on going, run him 25-30 times and see what happens.”

“The soreness in his foot isn’t gone, but he’s playing with it,” Pete said the next day during The Pete Carroll Show. “Both those guys (Carson and Carlos Hyde) got issues, but they’re making it to the game.”

If he wasn’t feeling 100% during the week leading up to the game, it made sense to limit his touches. That said, he sure looked awesome against both Philly and New York. Ten touches (eight carries, two receptions) for 59 yards and a touchdown against the Birds and 16 touches (13 carries, three receptions) for 110 yards and a TD on the G-Men. And that’s why this comment from Pete hours after The Pete Carroll Show with us made me raise my massive eyebrows.

“There’s an inclination that he’s ready to go, and we’d love to do that,” said Pete during his Monday afternoon press conference. “But we’re not holding back for four weeks from now. This is a championship run right here.”

Now, it’s really put up or shut up time. Seattle needs to keep winning for a chance to win the NFC West and a home playoff game. But wasn’t it playoff football time already?

Until Sunday’s loss to New York, the Seahawks had a legitimate shot at the NFC’s No. 1 seed and the conference’s lone first-round bye. If Carson looked good against the Giants, couldn’t they have asked him if he felt healthy enough to take on more of a load? Because with the way New York played – playing a lot of two-deep looks defensively – they were just asking to be ran on. Instead, Seattle asked Russell Wilson to keep shooting it deep. Something that I think Brian Schottenheimer regrets.

“Chris has been working his way back,” Schottenheimer said during his Thursday press conference. “There were certainly times as I look back at that game with the way that they were playing that I should have mixed in a few more runs to him.”

I’m not asking the Seahawks to revert to their run heavy, pre-2020 ways. But I’m asking for more Chris Carson. He’s looked healthy the last two weeks, and should be the perfect, punishing weapon for Seattle’s offense down the stretch. And if they give him the rock, I think the Seahawks have a legitimate shot at closing out the season with 12 wins.

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