Seahawks’ Pete Carroll on Bills’ Rex Ryan: ‘Just coach your own guys’

The wild sequence at the end of the first half of the Seahawks’ win over Buffalo Monday night preceded another significant play involving cornerback Richard Sherman. He returned a third-quarter interception 31 yards up the Bills’ sideline then stared down Buffalo’s bench after being pushed out of bounds.

Addressing both plays after the game, Bills coach Rex Ryan said Sherman should have been flagged for unnecessary roughness for his contact on kicker Dan Carpenter, and he used a three-letter word to describe Sherman when asked about their sideline stare-down after the interception.

“Well, he is mean-mugging like he’s doing, whatever, but the guy is a great player,” Ryan said. “I guess it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I thought he roughed our kicker. It was a ridiculous play. Then he is over on the sideline basically taunting us, so I had some words. I think I said that, ‘You’re too good of a player to act like an ass.’ I think that’s what I said.”

Seahawks coach Pete Carroll was asked about Ryan’s reaction during his visit with “Brock and Salk” Tuesday morning.

“I just wish he’d coach his own team,” Carroll said. “That’s it. Just coach your own guys.”

Carroll was also asked about Carpenter’s wife, Kaela, implying Monday night that Sherman should be castrated for acting like an “animal.” In a tweet that included a picture of a castration tool, she wrote: “I know what we do on the farm when a male can’t control his own rage. #LuckyImNotThere #Sherman #ActLikeAnAnimalGetTreatedLike1”

Sherman’s reply to that tweet: “Thank you! Have a great day.”

@KaelaCarpenter 😂😂😂😂😂 Thank you! Have a great day

— Richard Sherman (@RSherman_25) November 8, 2016

Said Carroll: “She can do what she wants. She has a right. It’s her own opinion.”

The play involving Sherman and Carpenter came with 3 seconds left in the first half, when Buffalo was lining up for a 53-yard field-goal attempt. Sherman came off the edge so early that he arrived at the ball before it was even kicked.

Sherman refuted the notion that he dived for Carpenter’s leg, saying afterward that he was going for the ball as it was still on the ground. He tweeted a picture Tuesday showing his hand on the ball before making contact with Carpenter.

🤔🤔 pic.twitter.com/6ZDcpWPTTd

— Richard Sherman (@RSherman_25) November 8, 2016

Carroll referenced a picture showing the same thing. He said Carpenter exaggerated the extent of the contact Sherman made with him, noting how Carpenter seemed OK moments later.

“They should have signaled the play dead, but I don’t know that that happened,” Carroll said. “Richard was committed and going, and he was going to get by the guy. There’s a fantastic picture that we got with his hand on the football as well. But that’s not really what the call is, and that’s what they clarified afterwards. Richard did the best he could to try to block the kick. Once he’s already there, he’s afraid he’s going to run by it. And unfortunately, the guy gets hit, and the guy hams it up a little bit, too, which made it bad, because he was ready to play that same play, fortunately.

“They should have blown it like it’s an unabated guy to the quarterback. That’s what the call should have followed. Then, if a guy comes off the edge, they blow the whistle and he goes and drills the quarterback, then they give you unnecessary roughness. That’s what the call should have been in that case.”

What if there wasn’t a whistle blown initially, before Sherman collided with Carpenter? He said he didn’t hear one.

“I don’t know,” Carroll said. “Was there a whistle or wasn’t there a whistle? I don’t know. They have to determine that. Could you hear it at that moment? I would think maybe not. So who knows. It turned out to be a crazy sequence, but it really wasn’t that big of a deal.”

Asked what Sherman is taught to do in that moment, once he’s offsides and has a free path to the kicker, Carroll said: “He should avoid the contact if he hears the whistle. Otherwise, he plays the play out.”

So, in the absence of a whistle, he should have done what he did?

“Play the play out, try to block the kick and he did,” Carroll said.