Seahawks’ Carroll on rough opener: ‘We gotta get our act together’

Sep 11, 2023, 12:00 PM | Updated: 3:09 pm

Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll looks on during a Sept. 10, 2023 game against the LA Rams. (Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

(Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

BY BRENT STECKER

Editor of SeattleSports.com

Seattle Seahawks teams under Pete Carroll have been known for slow starts and strong finishes.

Rost: What went wrong for Seahawks in shocking Week 1 loss?

When it comes their Week 1 loss to the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday, it was the opposite of what Carroll aims for. Seattle jumped out to a 13-7 halftime lead, but the Rams dominated the second half to come away with the 30-13 victory.

“I did like the way we started. I didn’t like the way we finished, and that’s something I take great pride in. That was really disappointing,” the longtime Seahawks head coach said Monday during the weekly Pete Carroll Show on Seattle Sports.

Issues were all over the place for the Seahawks in the final two quarters of the defeat, from penalties to injuries to trouble on third down – and that goes for both sides of the ball. Los Angeles converted 11 of 17 third downs, while Seattle was just 2 of 9.

So where does the blame belong?

“I didn’t do a good enough job, you know,” Carroll admitted. “I didn’t get us right to come back out in the third quarter and go ahead and execute. I’m just so disappointed that that is what this looked like. They went down the field and scored, we get nothing. They go down the field, get a field goal, we get nothing. And that’s kind of how the the second half took hold and we couldn’t get out of it.”

Carroll was understanding of the letdown Sunday represented after last season’s surprising run to the playoffs, two straight big NFL Drafts and some notable offseason additions for the Seahawks.

“I know that we had really high expectations going in,” he said. “I would be the first to tell you, personally, I probably did a really good job of transferring that to our fans and they were ready for us, too, and it didn’t happen. It was really disappointing.”

The game wasn’t completely void of positive takeaways, though.

“There’s so many good things that we can see,” Carroll said. “The line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball was well done in the running game. (We played) as good a run defense we’ve played in quite a while, and consistently, and in particular to see our guys fight so hard at the end and try to get us the ball back. Aside from the fact that we were jumping on hard counts, we really were still in there battling. I liked that, I’m gonna build on that.”

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The Seahawks know rebounding in Week 2 will be a tough task as they go on the road next Sunday to face a 1-0 Detroit Lions team that knocked off the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs last Thursday. More than the Lions, though, Carroll is concerned with things that are in his team’s control.

“We gotta get our act together. That wasn’t a good performance in any way, as the whole game showed,” Carroll said. “… It ain’t going away. We have to respond and we’ve got an extremely difficult challenge this week coming up with Detroit, high flying and all of that. But it ain’t about them, it’s gonna be about us and we gotta play all the way throughout.

“This game is one that you can get distracted, and you come away from it being like you’re capable. That’s where we have to be strong enough and mindful enough to be in command of our senses and our awareness and our interactions, and really just the fundamental play. We got sloppy in there as we got going because we got distracted some. The penalties that happened in the second half, that stinks. We shouldn’t have done that and then we shouldn’t have been there. You could see us, we’re jumping on hard counts, we’re not holding it. Those things, we can’t let those become part of our game because it affects us, and it did. So we have to be way better at it than that.”

The Pete Carroll Show airs live at 9:30 a.m. the day after each Seahawks game on Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk. Listen to this week’s full episode in the podcast at this link or in either of the video and audio players near the top of this post.