No rest: Seahawks ‘going for it’ Sunday vs. 49ers, trying to secure NFC’s top playoff seed
His Seahawks have the playoffs and division title clinched. They’ve secured a home playoff game, something they haven’t had in four years.
Yet raise the idea of resting players or coasting Sunday in the regular-season finale on the road against the eliminated San Francisco 49ers, and Seattle coach Pete Carroll flashes a look like you are from Mars.
Or Green Bay.
“We’re going for it,” Carroll said Monday of week 17. “We’d love to have that break for our players, if we can get it.”
“It” is the number-one seed in the NFC for the postseason that begins Jan. 9-10. That’s the only playoff seed that gets a first-round bye in the NFL’s new, expanded playoffs of 14 teams, up from the previous 12.
As Russell Wilson said after the Seahawks’ win over the Los Angeles Rams Sunday that clinched the quarterback’s fourth NFC West title in nine seasons: “There’s more to do.”
Seattle (11-4) has an outside chance at the NFC’s number-one seed. The Seahawks must beat the 49ers (6-9). The Packers (12-3), the current one seed, must lose at Chicago (8-7). And New Orleans (11-4), the current second seed, must lose at Carolina (5-10).
“We’re playing for it,” Carroll said.
“We are going to try to take care of business and get that thing, if it’s possible. We’re going all out, again, this week. There’s no other thought than playing.”
Then Carroll used one his favorite, weekly phrases, one he uses from week one in September.
“This is a championship opportunity,” he said, “to put ourselves in the best situation going into the playoffs.”
Seattle currently holds the third seed in the conference. If the Seahawks, Packers and Saints, all favored, all win Sunday Seattle stays the third seed and would host the sixth seed Jan. 9 or 10. Right now, the Rams are the sixth seed. They host Arizona (8-7), which must win and have Chicago lose to get into the playoffs. That’s because the Cardinals lost last weekend at home to the 49ers.
If the Saints lose and the Seahawks win, Seattle will be the second seed. The Seahawks would also move up to number two if they win, the Packers lose and the Saints win. Seattle wins a two-team tiebreaker with Green Bay, on best winning percentage against common opponents Minnesota, Atlanta, San Francisco and Philadelphia.
The Seahawks-49ers, Packers-Bears and Saints-Panthers all kick off Sunday at 1:25 p.m. Pacific time.
Carroll said it’s not too difficult these days to keep close tabs on the other games during his—which is other way of saying he and his staff will on Sunday.
Yet the coach said that doesn’t mean if things aren’t breaking his way elsewhere the coach is going to start pulling Wilson, Bobby Wagner, K.J. Wright, Tyler Lockett, DK Metcalf and Jamal Adams off the field in Glendale, Ariz., Sunday all at once.
Carroll said he’s not going to have to remind his players to play through the final whistle of the final regular-season game.
“They ain’t hearing that,” Carroll said. “They’re not hearing anything from that. They’ve been doing everything we’ve been wanting them to do, throughout. I can’t imagine anybody looking for a way out. That’s just not what this group is about.
“The guys that might think that way don’t realize how valuable it is to get the bye. The bye’s really important, and to be healthy at the end of the season is so crucial.
“It’s worth playing for.”
Carroll said there is another side of the issue of playing the 49ers as if everything is still at stake for Seattle. He wants his players to maintain the mindset and the performance, particularly on defense, they’ve had the last six weeks.
The Seahawks have allowed 21, 17, 17, three, 15 and now nine points in their last six games. Their five best defensive performances in yards allowed have come in that span: the Jets (185 yards), the Eagles (250), the Giants (290), the Cardinals (314) and Sunday’s shutdown of the Rams (334) in the 20-9 victory that clinched Seattle’s first NFC West title since 2016.
Carroll wants—the Seahawks need—for defense to keep playing like that through Sunday and into the playoffs against the 49ers, who are likely to give quarterback C.J. Beathard his second start since 2018 on Sunday.
“The other side of this is maintaining the consistency, maintaining the regimen that we have and the mentality that we have. Man, I don’t want to break that thing right now,” Carroll said. “I don’t want to break that mentality—AT ALL. We want to stay right with it and try to get better. We’ve got a lot of room to get better. We made a lot of mistakes that we can fix during the course of this week for the next game, and leading into the next couple games and all that.
“So I don’t like taking the chance of breaking the mentality. I think we can get up every, single week. We can get up every frickin’ week. It doesn’t matter. There a lot of coaches that say, ‘Oh, you can get up four or five times per year, or three or four times a year.’ I’ve never thought that.
“I’m not going to mess with that right now. I want to keep on rollin’.”
In many ways, Sunday’s regular-season finale is like the game this month at home against the then-winless Jets. One week after cornerback Shaquill Griffin said his Seahawks took the Giants ‘lightly” and lost at home 17-12, the Seahawks did not go through the motions or overlook the Jets. Seattle annihilated them, 40-3.
Since then, the Jets have beaten the Rams in California, then this past weekend the Cleveland Browns. Since Seattle, New York has beaten two playoff teams for its first wins of 2020.
“The Jets game was way more indicative of our mentality than this (win over the Rams Sunday) was, to me,” Carroll said. “This game the guys rose up and did a great job and all of that. But the Jets game was a near-perfect game for us. And that was crucially important, to demonstrate that these guys are in.
“If there was a week that you might have trouble getting up, or maybe...it would have been that week, or whatever—I mean, just look around. It’s had an impact on some other clubs. This week is extremely important, coming off of this win, to come back and play right again, to show that you can handle the success. ...
‘This is a big deal. This is a really big deal, just as it was a couple weeks ago.”
