Win Forever now ‘one day at a time'

RENTON – The architect of “Win Forever” is having a hard time being on the losing end of so many games this season.

“I told the guys in the locker room that I’m not used to this,” Seattle coach Pete Carroll said after his team’s latest loss on Sunday, a 34-12 humbling by Cincinnati. “I’m not used to fighting out of situations like this. I don’t remember the old days, I don’t remember them anymore. I can only think of what we can become.”

Carroll hasn’t started a season 2-5 since his first year at USC in 2001. The Trojans rallied to win four of their final five and finished 6-6 on the season. And Carroll thinks this young group is resilient enough to overcome the Seahawks’ latest bout of adversity.

“We do have to push aside what’s gone on behind us,” he said. “We can’t do anything about that. That’s a discipline that we talk about and we deal with this topic a lot. It happens in games sometimes, in particular.

“So we’ve got to do it one day at a time and both sides of the ball – my meeting as well with the full team, we all addressed what’s going on right now, what the issue is and how we want to get in focus, and we want to play like we’re capable of playing and catch the balls we’re supposed to catch and stay (onside) when we’re supposed to stay (onside) and give ourselves a chance to play like we’re capable of playing.”

One thing that should help stabilize things offensively is having starting quarterback Tarvaris Jackson back on the field. Carroll said that Jackson, who played for the first time in three weeks since suffering a strained pectoral muscle against the New York Giants, came through the game fine and is slated to start against Dallas on Sunday.

“He says he feels OK,” Carroll said. “He feels better than he did last week at this time. So that’s a really positive sign. He has shown improvement on a day-to-day basis and he’s very cognizant of what it feels like and all.

“I would think with (Monday and today) and Wednesday, we’ll see how the week goes. But we’ll try to get him ready and definitely in my mind, he’s starting unless he can’t at this point. So it’s a different way of looking at it this week than last week.”

BALANCE NEEDED

Carroll said that the Seahawks will emphasize creating more balance offensively this week in practice.

For the past two years Carroll has been preaching the importance of establishing a physical running presence on offense, but he has not seen the results on the field.

The Seahawks are averaging 77.7 yards per game on the ground, second-worst in the league. Carroll brought in zone blocking guru Tom Cable as offensive line coach to fix that, but the Seahawks have been behind most of the time this season, so they’ve had to ditch the run and play catch-up by throwing the ball.

The Seahawks have thrown the ball 253 times and run it 145 times.

“We’ve got to balance out what’s going on, on offense,” Carroll said. “We’ve got to mix the way we like to mix. We liked it a couple weeks ago (in the 36-25 win over the New York Giants on Oct. 9), and that hasn’t come back to us. And so we’re going to focus real hard on getting that done, and seeing if we can generate the kind of balance that gives you a chance to have a real good attack.”

EXTRA POINTS

Tight end Cameron Morrah suffered a knee bruise that could affect his availability in practice, Carroll said. And receiver Mike Williams, who missed Sunday’s game against Cincinnati with a hamstring injury, received treatment and should be OK to practice this week. Carroll said offensive guard Robert Gallery got banged up during the game, but asked to stay in and made it through OK.

Eric D. Williams: 253-597-8437 eric.williams@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/seahawks