Still no positive cases, but COVID-19 still causing problems for Seahawks’ roster managing
The Seahawks have continued their remarkable string of zero positive cases of COVID-19.
Yet the coronavirus is still having an adverse effect on the Seahawks’ roster.
The team can’t immediately bolster it with outside help it needs.
When the Tennessee Titans had a coronavirus outbreak with 24 people, including 13 players, testing positive for COVID-19 between Sept. 24 and Oct. 11, the NFL had to postpone two Titans games. The league fined the Titans $350,000 for not following its safety protocols, according to Teresa Walker of The Associated Press in Nashville.
While doing so, the league sent notice to all teams that it had has added to their COVID testing protocols.
Players are now being tested every day, including on game days, home and away. The Seahawks and other teams bring a couple of the technicians that test them outside their team headquarters each day with them to road games. Those techs coordinate with their colleagues in the NFL home cities on testing players and coaches at the visiting team hotels.
Plus, what used to be a four-day indoctrination and testing period for a new player to join a team became six days under the new protocols this month. A player—or any person who misses one daily test at the team facility for any reason—must go back to day zero and begin the six-day testing regimen for re-entry. On the sixth day, that player or person must pass two test, a rapid-result, point-of-care test and the usual polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test players, coaches and team personnel have been getting since the start of training camps in late July.
Only after a new player passes those six days and seven tests can he begin training and practicing. He can’t even meet his new coach and teammates in person until after that week. Then he begins acclimating to the team and its playbook.
This also goes for anyone already on the team who uses commercial air travel and then seeks to get inside the facility. That’s how almost all signed and even visiting free agents plus traded players first report to their new teams.
Essentially, it’s become a two-to-three-week proposition to add any player from outside the organization in this coronavirus season.
“Yeah, it is. It really is,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said. “You’ve got to hope you have the crystal ball and you can get ahead of it.”
So that’s why the Seahawks (5-1) are first looking internally to improve their feeble pass rush and porous defense immediately, before their game against NFC West-rival San Francisco (4-3) on Sunday at CenturyLink Field.
It’s also why Carroll said the Seahawks have “creative thoughts” for running back this week. Seattle’s top three backs are injured: Chris Carson (sprained foot), Carlos Hyde (hamstring) and Travis Homer (bruised knee).
Rookie DeeJay Dallas is the only healthy running back on the roster heading into Sunday’s game against the 49ers. That’s why Dallas played in overtime of Seattle’s loss at Arizona, when he had a tough time handling the Cardinals’ many blitzes.
Wide receivers David Moore and Tyler Lockett may be running more fly sweeps if Carson, Hyde and Homer can’t play this week.
Seattle does not have a running back on its practice squad, which expanded this season from 10 to 16 players.
That decision is catching up to the Seahawks right now. Because of the problems of adding new players in this unprecedented COVID-19 season.
“When you do get hit (with injuries), like multiple guys at the spot, you can be in trouble there,” Carroll said. “So we just try to keep staying ahead of it. It’s a whole different dynamic to filling your roster and keeping it going.”
So how to help the D?
As for the defense that has allowed more yards through six games than any team in NFL history and a pass rush that has just nine sacks—seven by defensive linemen—in six games, Seattle is looking from within for help.
Not just with the players. The coaches, too.
Carroll said Monday defensive end Rasheem Green “should be back at practice, as we understand it, this week.” The team’s leader with four sacks in 2019, when the Seahawks finished next to last in the NFL in sacks, has been out injured for a month.
Carroll also implied rookie fifth-round pick Alton Robinson would get more than the seven snaps the defensive end got at Arizona.
“He’s an outside edge rusher,” the coach said, on a team that needs more of them.
Carroll explained the plan for quarterback Kyler Murray and the Cardinals was to pair Benson Mayowa and Shaquem Griffin as the rush ends on passing downs because they are the Seahawks’ two fastest, healthy edge rushers.
Griffin, though, was a relatively stationary and reactive spy on Murray for much of the fourth quarter and overtime. He stayed behind the linemen and waited for Murray to take off running rather than attacking and rushing after him.
Carroll said Monday that was a mistake. He said he should have been more forceful with defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. in changing the game plan late and pressuring Murray more.
The Seahawks entered the Cardinals game having chosen to do what they had against Miami and Minnesota: blitz far less than they had in the first three games, with Adams, and drop deeper into coverage to prevent big plays behind them.
But Murray, last year’s first-overall pick in the draft, was far more lethal attacking that soft, play-back defense than Ryan Fitzpatrick and Kirk Cousins were in Seattle’s two previous wins before Arizona.
“We have to keep working to put our players in the best positions to be aggressive ... we need to help them more in our pressure,” Carroll said. “We did not try to get after them much (in Arizona). That was not part of the plan going in. And when we needed it, we needed to adjust.
“I wish I would have gotten that done.”
Internal help options
Carroll backed off somewhat from his words Friday that All-Pro safety Adams would practice this week with the intent to play for the first time in four games Sunday against San Francisco. Carroll said Monday the team will see later in the week if Adams’ strained groin will be improved enough for him to play.
Carroll has a decision to make whenever Adams does return. Blitz more again with him? As much as they did in the first three games—when they allowed a whopping 19 plays of 20 yards or more?
It’s likely to be more blitzing with Adams than the Seahawks have been doing in the last three games, but less than in the first three weeks.
Top rookie pass rusher Darryl Taylor remains out indefinitely on the non-football-injury list. Carroll hasn’t said when Taylor will practice for the first time since he had surgery in January to have a Titanium rod put in his lower leg to fix a stress fracture.
Plus, former All-Pro defensive tackle Damon “Snacks” Harrison has yet to play for Seattle since signing three weeks ago. He’s been working to get in game shape.
The coach thinks Seattle’s last-ranked defense will get better when Adams, Taylor and Harrison get back on it.
It will make it whole, at least. Without complicated imports.
“I’d really like to feel the continuity of everybody that we can count on, but we’re not quite there yet,” Carroll said.
“I really think because of the intent and the focus and the guys playing hard...that we are going to make a turn, and we are going to turn for the better. And it’s going to make a big difference in this season.”
