New Seahawks play caller Brian Schottenheimer: “I need to be better. And I will be”

Brian Schottenheimer is amicable. He is publicly accountable.

The Seahawks, and everyone else, are about to find out if he is adaptable.

He is Seattle’s man on the spot this weekend, particularly on Sunday when the Seahawks (0-2) play the Dallas Cowboys (1-1) in their home opener at CenturyLink Field.

It’s become clear to everyone from Pete Carroll through Russell Wilson to the team’s in-house dog Turf that the Seahawks need to call more running plays. Way more than they have so far this season to avoid their first 0-3 start since 2002.

Well, Schottenheimer is the play caller.

“I need to do a better job. I’ll be the first to say that,” he said following Thursday’s practice.

He said that last week, too.

After a winter, spring and summer of Carroll vowing to re-establish the run as the basis for the offense, lead back Chris Carson has 13 carries in Seattle’s 119 plays so far this season. Seattle’s running backs, including rookie first-round pick Rashaad Penny (17) and Mike Davis (three), the starter at the end of last season after Carson broke his leg, have just 20 carries between them.

That’s 33 runs and 86 pass calls (Wilson’s thrown 69 times, been sacked 12 and scrambled out of pass plays five times). That’s 73 percent passes, 27 percent runs.

But wait, there’s more. Twenty-four of their 38 rushes this season have come on first down. They are not averaging more than 2.1 yards per rush on any first-down situation. That’s in any formation, 2 TEs, 3WRs, whatever. Thus, Schottenheimer’s mostly abandoned the run after that. Seattle has only 14 runs over their remaining 95 plays on all downs this season.

The result: the Seahawks are 29th in the league in third-down conversion rate, 28 percent.

That is absolutely not why Carroll hired Schottenheimer as his new coordinator this offseason and Mike Solari as his new line coach to install man-on-man, drive run-blocking techniques.

In Seattle’s 24-17 loss at Chicago Monday night, Carson got three carries for 13 yards and a first down on the game’s first three plays. He got three the rest of the night, and none after 11:51 remained in the second quarter.

The Seahawks did not run the ball once from 8 minutes left in the second quarter until 10 seconds into the fourth.

As for Carson having just 13 carries through two weeks in what have mostly been one-score games throughout them, Schottenheimer said: “When you have a rotation at backs, that happens. You come out of the game with 50, or whatever it is, plays. You’re trying to see Rashaad a little bit. You want to see Chris.

“You saw Chris early in the (Bears) game. You never project, ‘Wow, we’ve got 55 plays or 54 plays.’ So really it’s kind of like when this guy’s up, he gets a rep. Then, if you go three-and-out, unfortunately we know we’re trying to get Rashaad going as well. That’s been an Achilles heel for two weeks now because on third down, we’re just not getting the plays that we need.

“Quite honestly, we’re keeping the defense on the field too long and we can’t do that because obviously that’s how we’re going to win this as team: playing well offensively, defensively and special teams.”

Carroll tried to cover for his offensive coordinator this week. He said Seattle not running has been because he, Carroll, has been impatient. He said he told Schottenheimer at halftime Monday to come out throwing deep to begin the second half, to exploit what Carroll saw as a weakness with a Bears cornerback outside.

The result: six plays in the third quarter, six passes. Those netted a grand total of 1 yard in those two drives that were three and outs. The score stayed 10-3 Chicago. Carson stayed on the sideline having not touched the ball over the game’s final 42 minutes.

Schottenheimer said that was his fault, too.

“It’s just one of those things where you get a lot of thoughts and advice as a play caller. Not just from Pete. From everybody,” Schottenheimer said. “Until it’s third and 22 and you’re backed up on your 1-yard line, you’re like, ‘Hey guys, what do you like? Hello? Hello?’”

He laughed. Yes, he was joking. I think.

“I think some of it’s me learning Pete a little bit,” he said.

“Hey look, I get paid to call the plays. I need to do a better job. Sometimes it gets you off your game, when you’re looking at different things. It’s not Pete. It’s just different things. It’s hard to find a rhythm sometimes.

“But I need to be better. And I will be.”

How, specifically, does he need to be better?

“If you look at week one, I got away from the running game a little bit too fast,” he said of Seattle’s 27-24 loss at Denver when the running backs got 14 carries in 55 plays.

“This week (at Chicago), only having six plays in the third quarter, that was just one of those deals where we’re not converting third downs. The cool thing that I said to the guys is this: We know what the issues are, so when you know what the issues are, you can address them, you can fix them. You can emphasize that it’s time of possession, it’s third downs, it’s sacks. ...

“We know what we need to clean up. We’ve been emphasizing that. We started last week with red zone and we did a nice job in the red zone last week. I think we’ll find our rhythm again this week. We know we need to be better. Nobody likes sitting here at 0-2. We’re competing to (improve).”

Wilson needs Schottenheimer’s help.

The $88-million franchise quarterback’s been sacked an NFL-high 12 times through two games. That’s twice as many sacks as Wilson took through two games of 2017. It’s four more than he absorbed in the first two games or 2015. That’s the only other time in Wilson’s seven-year career as their starter the Seahawks started 0-2.

Yes, Seattle has faced two of the NFL’s best, most relentless pass rushers in its first two games: Denver’s Von Miller and Chicago’s Mack. They have bull-rushed and sped past right tackle Germain Ifedi and left tackle Duane Brown, looped inside and not picked up by center Justin Britt and right guard J.R. Sweezy. But Wilson has also held onto the ball too long as the pocket has tightened and eventually fallen apart around him.

Wilson said three of the Broncos’ six sacks of him in the opener was his fault. A safe count from the Bears game was two. So five of the 12 sacks have been on Wilson. That’s why Carroll said this week, much to the bemusement or agitation of Seahawks fans, that his team’s pass protection is actually better than it’s been in recent seasons.

A consistent, persistent effort to actually, no-fake run the ball, for a change, would help that pass protection in ways Wilson running around improvising cannot.

Mack last week, and especially Miller in the opener in Denver when he sacked Wilson three times, disregarded the idea Seattle might run. They just came off the edge after Wilson, with a step head start on Ifedi and the Seahawks’ blockers they wouldn’t have had if they had to read run-pass blocking keys at the snap first. That’s what most defenses that played Seattle in 2017 had their edge rushers do, too.

That was while the Seahawks had one of the most meager production rushing yards and touchdowns by running backs in many NFL seasons last year. Their leading rusher last season had 240 yards. For the year. That was Davis.

So far this season, the Broncos and Bears have added a twist to how teams come after Wilson without having to regard the Seahawks’ nonexistent running game. Miller and Mack rushed from outside and often stayed out there during games one and two. That kept Wilson from escaping around him and finding yards either scrambling or throwing outside the pocket, while wide receivers run improvisational routes. That playground ball was a Seahawks staple in 2017, when Wilson threw for 3,900 yards and led the NFL with 34 touchdown passes.

Wilson’s spent the first two games of 2018 running into sacks trying to do that on the edges against Miller and Mack.

Wilson’s pocket has also collapsed around him as he’s held onto the ball. Right tackle Germain Ifedi said this week the Seahawks’ linemen are emphasizing giving Wilson a bigger pocket by gaining leverage and holding their ground longer, not retreating back into their quarterback so much.

A running game—even a mere semblance of one—would slow the pass rushers and thus the Seahawks blockers’ retreat. Dallas is second in the NFL with nine sacks, one behind Chicago. Demarcus Lawrence had one of the Cowboys’ six sacks of the Giants Eli Manning last weekend. Lawrence had 14 1/2 sacks last season.

I asked Scottenheimer if the Seahawks have gotten to the point that running the ball just for the sake of running it, to slow down defenses and make them play Seattle more honestly, regardless of yards gained.

“To answer that question, obviously, you need to run the football,” he said.

So there. Now will it finally happen Sunday?

“Obviously, that balance is really what makes it harder for the defense to tee off,” he said. “Some of the issues are when you get into the long-yardage situations, like the first third down of the year this year was at Denver, third and 17. I just called the simple downhill run because it was kind of like, ‘Hey, let’s just move on, let’s just move forward.’ If you’re not balanced, which we haven’t had great balance, it definitely affects the way that defensive fronts play you.

“Quite honestly, when you can’t sustain drives where we’ve been struggling to sustain drives—we’ve had too many three-and-out—they’re fresh defensively. I think what you saw late in the (Chicago) game, we were moving the ball, did a nice job with some of the 2-minute stuff that we were doing. And they kind of got worn down a little bit.”

The Seahawks scored a touchdown in garbage time against the Bears, on a 99-yard drive while down 24-10 with under 2 minutes to play Monday.

Yet Schottenheimer saw in that march the rushing attack could actually be an asset this season, not an inconvenience.

“That happened. We were running. We were throwing it. And the pocket got a little bit cleaner,” Sunday’s Seahawk on the spot said. “The run game started popping a little bit, because you can kind of wear them down.

“It definitely helps you. For sure.”

This story was originally published September 21, 2018 at 7:33 AM with the headline "New Seahawks play caller Brian Schottenheimer: “I need to be better. And I will be”."