Pete Carroll Show: Seahawks losing despite winning turnover battle

Seahawks coach Pete Carroll joined “Brock and Salk” on Monday to review Seattle’s 27-23 loss to Carolina. The audio of that conversation can be found here. Below are some highlights.

Miscommunication on TD. Carroll said Seattle’s defensive communication had been fine up until a breakdown on the play that resulted in Carolina’s game-winning touchdown pass from Cam Newton to a wide-open Greg Olsen. “The call didn’t get to everybody the way it always does. There was some kind of a glitch in there that happened. Unfortunately, it gives them an easy touchdown. Our defense called for us to be rolled over on top of Olsen. He never would have thrown the ball there; we would have had a safety on top and a corner underneath and all that. So we just didn’t execute the call coming from the sidelines and get it across the board to everybody. We just missed it. And somehow that happened in a very unusual fashion in an untimely moment.”

Turnover trend not holding true. Just like last week, Carroll was at a loss to explain how the Seahawks could lose another game in which they won the turnover battle. That was the case against Cincinnati and again on Sunday as Seattle picked off two Carolina passes and didn’t turn the ball over on offense. Winning the turnover battle has been a formula for success for Carroll’s teams dating back to his days at USC. The Seahawks were 33-6 from 2010-2014 when finishing ahead in turnover differential, but they’re 0-3 in such games this season. Carroll said he “can’t fathom” how that could continue to be the case: “This turnover thing is crazy. This goes so far against all of our numbers and our statistics and all of that.”

Lewis at center. Carroll had what seemed like a rather tepid review of the way Patrick Lewis played while making his first start of the season at center, which had previously been Drew Nowak’s job. Like he was after the game, Carroll was noncommittal about which player will start going forward: “We’ll see. We have to get together about that. I know Patrick played a solid game. Not a whole lot of difference than what we’ve been seeing from Drew, but we’ll check that out this week and figure out what we’re going to (do) next.”

No time to sulk. The Seahawks face a quick turnaround with a Thursday-night game at San Francisco. While that presents a challenge in terms of preparation, Carroll said it’s a good thing in this case given the nature of Seattle’s loss to Carolina. “We go into the game-plan for Thursday today, unlike a normal Monday. So this is a day that’s loaded with a lot of stuff and we’re going to have to move quickly. There isn’t time to be kicking your lower lip around and that kind of thing. We have to get going.”

Injury notes. Carroll said middle linebacker Bobby Wagner could have played with his pectoral strain but that holding him out was the prudent move with a quick turnaround this week before Thursday night’s game against San Francisco: “If he had played, (there) almost would have been no chance of playing on Thursday.” Carroll said wide receiver Paul Richardson has a chance to begin practicing this week, which he’s now eligible to do per rules pertaining to players on the Physically Unable to Perform list. Carroll said cornerback Jeremy Lane, who’s also on PUP, is “still another couple weeks away.”

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