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Seattle Seahawks: Injury-Plagued or Just Not Very Good?
There have been plenty of teams this season in the NFL that are simply hard to figure out. Somewhere near the top of that list has to be the Seattle Seahawks.They started the year with first-year coach Pete Carroll, a guy coming from the college ranks which usually is frowned upon by NFL fans. But in Week 1, they dominated San Francisco, many folks’ pick to win the NFC West. The Seahawks went on to win four of their first six games, but the other victories came over San Diego, Chicago and Arizona — not exactly the cream of the crop.Now, two games and two blowout losses later, they’re sitting at 4-4 with perhaps the longest and most detrimental injury list in the league. Is that what caused them to lose the last two games by a combined score of 74-10? Or, despite being tied for the division lead, are they just not that good? I suspect a combination, but we may never find out.Pete Carroll joined 710 ESPN in Seattle with Brock and Salk to discuss how bad Sunday’s 41-7 loss to the Giants really was, the expectations he has at quarterback, what it’s like to have a losing streak, the difficulty of blowout losses, how much of a toll the injuries have taken and what the fans should take from a third consecutive injury-plagued season.
On how bad Sunday’s loss was:
“Well, we got whipped at the line of scrimmage and the running game didn’t do as well as we had to do to help out [quarterback Charlie Whitehurst] and getting going. We were challenged on offense from the start. We gave up a couple big time situations. You give them a big, quick touchdown, you give them the ball on the four-yard line and it’s 14 and they had one drive and it’s 21-0. Now we’re fighting an uphill battle the whole way.”
On what he expects from his quarterbacks (injured Matt Hasselbeck and Whitehurst) now:
“We’ve got to get good, functioning offense out of them. They’ve got to run the offense well and hit the balls that are easy and make sure we utilize high-percentage stuff. We threw the ball quick in this game, the protection held up and gave us a chance, but we missed too many balls that were there. One way or the other, you don’t get the movement going, so it makes it very hard.”
On what it’s like to have a losing streak for the first time in a long time:
“It’s different in significant losses, when you really feel like you got outplayed. That’s uncommon for me. But when you have an approach and a way you’re looking at things and the way you deal with it, you go right back to what you know. We have to work really hard at it. Just because we want to doesn’t mean we will. We have to go out there and play the game and our guys are in it.”
On whether it’s more difficult to suffer big losses than heartbreakers:
“I think it’s just different. It just depends on where the team is. At this stage right now, we’re fighting to find ourselves again, so it’s a little different than when you lose a heart-breaking, overtime loss. It’s a different format altogether.”
On the Seahawks’ injury situation:
“You have to remember, let’s go back, remember we came out of the bye week with one guy missing practice. Two weeks later, there might have been 14 or 15 guys that, somewhere in there, missed practice, and your starting quarterback. That’s just the facts. When you’re sitting here today and thinking about it, ‘How come we’re not doing this or that?’ Well, there’s reasons and we just have to deal with them and see how we can fit it back together.”
On what fans should take away from the fact that this is the third straight year that injuries have wreaked havoc on the Seahawks:
“Sometimes there’s guys that continue to get hurt that it’s just the makeup of their body and all that. I don’t know about that recurring with guys. I don’t see that. But I just think it is how it goes sometimes and you have to deal with it and hopefully function your way through it. Our guys are beautifully conditioned, they work hard, they’re steady with their work. We were going great. … It’s just the time and we have to see if we can battle our way through it.”
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