Why Pete Carroll says he’s “going for it” Sunday, not resting Seahawks starters for playoffs
Oh, yes, Pete Carroll believes momentum for the playoffs is real. And vital.
Maintaining momentum is why the 67-year-old coach has spent the past week vowing to treat the Seahawks’ relatively meaningless regular-season finale Sunday against Arizona (3-12) at CenturyLink Field as he has every other “championship opportunity”—what Carroll loves to call every game.
“Not changing anything,” he said.
Not even for this one. It’s one of the only times in his nine seasons leading the Seahawks they have a playoff berth clinched before the seasons ends, with next to nothing to play for. It’s in essence a practice game before the postseason begins next week.
The only thing at stake for the Seahawks is the difference between the fifth and sixth seeds in the NFC playoffs. That is the difference between playing at Dallas, more likely, or at Chicago next Saturday or Sunday in round one.
Seattle (9-6) would play next weekend outdoors in the Lake Michigan wind at the NFC North-champion Bears, to whom they lost in week two, instead of indoors at the NFC East-champion Cowboys they beat at home in week three if the Seahawks lose to Arizona and Minnesota beats Chicago in Minneapolis on Sunday.
Carroll signed a two-year extension with the Seahawks believed to be worth more than $11 million per year through the 2021 season on Monday. He spent the days since telling the public why available starters such as battered receiver Doug Baldwin, safety Bradley McDougald and maybe guard D.J. Fluker will start and will play, as usual.
He hasn’t had to tell his players. They already know. It’s all they know. They live the consistency of his “every week is a championship opportunity” approach. They trust Carroll will coach against the Cardinals like he has his first 143 regular-season games leading Seattle.
So it’s business as usual for the Seahawks. That includes holding the team’s annual end-of-the-regular-season basketball shooting contest in the players’ main auditorium before another team meeting. Baldwin and Tyler Lockett won the doubles competition, Carroll was proud to announce. They even got trophies for their win.
Carroll spent more than 500 words and nearly three full minutes Friday outlining the reasons why he won’t rest starters that aren’t hurt on Sunday.
“I particularly think it’s a part of the discipline of performance, that you don’t allow yourself to say that this game isn’t as important as some other game,” Carroll said. “I know that there are coaches—and you guys have all heard it for years—say that ‘you can only get up so many times a year. You can only have so many big games’ and all that.
“I just flat out know that’s not true. I just know it’s not true.”
His All-Pro middle linebacker smiles at such thinking.
“You know how he is,” Bobby Wagner said. “He loves doubters and he loves proving people wrong.”
Carroll says he understands why people say and believe some games aren’t as important as others.
But...
“We don’t subscribe to that thinking,” the coach said.
“And we’re going to go for it every frickin’ time forever, no matter where it is or when it is, so that we learn to find the edge that it takes to stay consistent and stay good.
“I don’t think it shows up one game to the next. It shows up when you look back over a long period of time, that you’ve minimized the ups and downs.”
This is Carroll’s time with the Seahawks: 88 wins, 54 losses and one tie in the regular season. He’s the winningest coach in franchise history. He’s 9-5 in the postseason, including back-to-back Super Bowls at the end of the 2013 and ‘14 seasons. That’s three times more playoff wins in his eight years with them than the Seahawks had in their first 29 years of existence.
He’s coached the team that won Seattle’s only NFL championship, in Feb. 2014. The Seahawks have qualified for the playoffs seven times in Carroll’s nine seasons. They went to the playoffs seven times in 23 years before that, from 1988 until Carroll arrived in January 2010.
To Carroll, the key is consistency in messaging, approach, preparation and play. That doesn’t change when the games have less on the line, as Sunday’s against a Cardinals team that is one loss away from getting the first pick in the NFL draft this spring.
“We have some numbers in our background in our years here, and we had them at SC (when he won titles at USC before coming to Seattle), where there aren’t a lot of games that were really outlier games for us to the negative,” Carroll said.
Indeed, his Seahawks set an NFL record for not having mental no-shows at any game, 95 consecutive games of not losing by more than 10 points. That streak ended in December 2016. His Seattle teams have had only three such wipeouts in his nine years. That’s the fewest in the league in that span.
“We’ve been pretty consistent over a really long time,” Carroll said. “I think that’s a statement of what this mentality is all about, that you just don’t allow yourself to take a breath and kick back and put your feet up. You don’t get to do that. You just keep pushing and keep going and you only learn one way to do it.
“It’s hard enough to do it if you only have one way and to maintain the habits and the consistency and mentality and all of the things that you have to do to maintain a high level of performance over a long period of time. So it’s just too precious and it’s not worth cracking the egg and then starting over again. I just don’t want to do that.”
So, yes, Russell Wilson will start against the Cardinals, just like the franchise quarterback has all 111 times in the regular season and 12 times in the postseason since Carroll drafted him in 2012. But don’t be surprised Sunday if and when backup Brett Hundley plays his first snaps as a Seahawk, likely in the fourth quarter.
Chris Carson will play. But don’t expect the 1,000-yard rusher to get all his usual carries. Mike Davis and J.D. McKissic are likely to see more action that usual at running back, especially with rookie Rashaad Penny just returning from missing two games with a knee injury.
Baldwin will also play. But the 30-year-old wide receiver who’s been battered by two knee, two groin and now shoulder injuries this season isn’t likely to get the nine targets, seven catches and season-high 126 yards receiving he got last weekend in the playoff-clinching win over Kansas City. Or the eight receptions and 131.7 yards per game he’s averaged in the last three home games against Arizona, with four touchdowns.
Why even play them? Why play Fluker, who has a strained hamstring and hasn’t started the last three games at right guard?
Because Carroll isn’t treating this game differently. Whether you want him to, or not.
“And it’s worked out,” Carroll said. “And I don’t feel like I’m driving these guys into the dirt by the way we do it mentally. I feel like they work to establish a discipline that allows them to have a manner in how they do this and they have habits that they create and they have regimens that they live by. That’s what gives them the chance to keep coming back, and we just don’t want to mess with those. They’re too precious and it’s fleeting. It’s so fleeting. It goes away in a heartbeat.
“Normal teams go up and down all the time. That’s not the way we want to do it. We want to be uncommon. Uncommonly committed to the discipline of this. It takes practice, and I’ve got to do a great job of it...
“I’ve got to be the epitome of the consistency if they’re going to do it.”
This story was originally published December 29, 2018 at 12:34 PM.
