Pete Carroll recaps Seahawks’ baffling loss to Saints

Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll joined Brock Huard and Mike Salk for his final Pete Carroll Show with Brock and Salk (though not his final show of the season; more info on that here) to recap Seattle’s first defeat of the season: a baffling 33-27 loss at home to the New Orleans Saints.

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“It was a hard day, man,” Carroll said in reference to Seattle’s many self-inflicted wounds. “Gosh, there were so many things in that day. Just so many different little situations and little decisions that just didn’t go right. There was a ton of them. And it added up. We really were in position; we could’ve done fine in this game. We really could have. But there was just enough stuff that happened and it just added up too much.”

Listen to Carroll’s full interview in the audio clip embedded above. Here are a few highlights:

It seems like three weeks in, those running lanes and holes haven’t been there. What’s going on with that offensive line? “It’s not as clean as we want, but we did have 90 yards rushing at halftime. And it’s 27-7 before you know it. And so I’m saying to (offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer), ‘Let’s go two minutes, let’s get on the move and see what happens.’ Just to see if we could speed up the opportunity because Russell (Wilson) is great in that situation. So we’re out of it. We’re out of the plan. So what’s up with those guys? I don’t know, they pass protected the best we have against the best pass rush in the league today. We did let a couple penetrations happen… I don’t think we were off in the running game, I think we were out of the game, in a sense, in the gameplan. So I’m not concerned about that part of it really. Just the game took us out of it.”

How do you handle something like Chris Carson’s fumbles? Your whole program is about protecting the ball, but you love Carson’s talent: “We have to bring him through it. We have to bring him through it. And so you’ll see how we do that. But we have to just work him back to a normalcy that feels comfortable to him. We preach that when you go to the ground you have to take care of the ball all the way to the ground and that means you don’t brace for the fall. And you’ll see him on the fumble that gets knocked out, he’s got both hands on the ball all the way to the last bit of it and then he puts his hand out, and that guy hit it exactly on the money again – that’s three great punches that have occurred — and the ball comes flying out. Unfortunately we didn’t tackle the guy. The thing I can’t even fathom is how they can have three fumble recoveries and they run them all back to the goal line. I can’t even imagine that that could happen, but it did. And so we have to work his way back through it. He cares, he’s on it, they’re working on it every day.”

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