Why Seahawks leaders love their sub-.500 team probably a lot more than you do right now
From Pete Carroll through Russell Wilson and Bobby Wagner, the Seahawks’ leaders love their sub-.500 team.
Probably a lot more than you do this morning.
“I love these guys,” Carroll said Sunday evening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum after short-handed Seattle (4-5) almost pulled off an epic upset before losing to the 9-1 Rams 36-31. “The way they went after it (Sunday), it was awesome.”
Of course the almost always sunnyside-up coach wasn’t going to say following the second consecutive loss that his Seahawks are finished. Not with seven games still to play in the regular season. That would make for a rather long and dark November and December.
But Carroll was almost glowing and noticeably over-the-top positive to not just the media but the Seahawks inside their locker room following this loss. He knows his team has no time to dwell and despair, not with Thursday’s game against Green Bay (4-4-1) at CenturyLink Field just three practices away.
“We aren’t slowing down,” Carroll said. “We’re going to keep going, keep running the football, keep setting the tempo we want to, and just try to play a little bit cleaner. Try to slow them down a little bit more, and give ourselves a chance to win.”
Yes, they are sub-.500. But they are not, the Seahawks insist, subterranean.
“We feel like we’re a lot better than our record shows,” Wagner, the All-Pro linebacker, said. “We had some plays that got away from us and lost some games.
“There’s still a lot of football left. We’re confident that we’ll pull it out.”
Carroll also believes the Seahawks are better than what they are: a 4-5 team.
“Yeah, I really do,” the coach said. “I’ve been feeling that since we go going, about week four. We started finding ourselves and figuring out what we’re all about and how we can play this game.
“I love the way we’re playing. ... Running the football, fighting on defense like we do, and having Russ able to make plays and do the stuff like he did (Sunday).
“It was an incredible comeback, incredible game by Russ, just to keep running and making things happen and keeping us in it.
‘There wasn’t anybody on the field that didn’t bust their ass (Sunday). Everybody did. That’s a tribute to everybody that’s working in this program and how they fight regardless of what the circumstances are.
“We’ll go anywhere, play anybody.”
They are going to have to.
The Seahawks are two games behind Carolina and 1 1/2 games behind Minnesota for the final two wild-card spots into January’s playoff. The Packers are a 1/2 game ahead of Seattle in the wild-card race with seven games to play.
Thing is, the Seahawks play all three of those ahead of them: Green Bay on Thursday night at CenturyLink Field, the following game Nov. 25 at the Panthers and Dec. 10 at home against the Vikings.
So, no, the Seahawks aren’t out of it. But they are about out of lives. They need six wins—10 wins usually assure a postseason spot—in their last seven regular-season games to do it.
And they need a defense that can get more of a pass rush than two sacks and five hits on the quarterback in 41 drop backs. That’s what Seattle did against Jared Goff on Sunday. The Rams’ QB and his zooming receivers had so much time to exploit so many open spaces in the Seahawks’ zone coverages en route to 456 yards and 36 points.
“One hundred percent. One hundred percent. I definitely believe that we can turn this around,” Wagner said. “We’ve got a very tough schedule. It’s going to show what we’re made of.
“We have to get right back at it. We’ve got a Thursday night game, so it’s one of those times where it’s good to kind of get back and wash away this loss.”
Wagner, Wilson and their teammates are taking the attitude that all five losses this season being by one score, eight points or fewer, show how close they are to going on a roll toward the playoffs over the next month and a half.
“It’s building character. I think it’s building belief. I think it’s building who we’re going to be, you know, for the rest of the season but also for years to come,” Wilson said. “We’ve got a lot of great, young guys, and I’m looking forward to what’s in store.
“I think you’ve got to have great faith. You have to have belief that great things are going to happen. You want to win every game. You want to be able to judge a lot of things by wins and losses. But I think true character and growth really comes from how you prepare every day and how you build off the tough times...and I think that we’re doing that and we’re right in the midst of it.
“Unfortunately, it didn’t work out for us. But we have great faith that great things are going to happen.”
Carroll said before his team boarded its flight home and straight into an immediate work week for the Packers game Thursday night that the players “keep believing.”
“We’ve got to bring this thing together a little bit tighter,” Carroll said. “We have to do the things that we’ve been doing, but the fight that we’ve shown, the competitive that we’re all about is going to give us a chance to do something really special.
“We keep believing. And that’s the message. There are no negatives here. There are no negatives coming out of this thing. ...The essence right now is hanging and believe. ...
“I can’t wait for another week to keep this thing rolling.”