Jason Myers takes accountability online for miss, says don’t make it a Wilson-Carroll item
These times don’t exactly encourage voluntary accountability across professional sports.
For the two years and counting of the pandemic, restrictions and safeguards from COVID-19 have meant reporters don’t interview players in their locker rooms after games. There are no media members in them anymore. Only the few players selected by the team plus the head coach explain in sterile, press-conference settings what went right and often, in the case of this lost Seahawks this season — went went wrong.
That’s what makes what Jason Myers did Monday even more extraordinary that it would have been in any circumstance.
Myers spoke — er, wrote — up and took responsibility online one day after he missed a 39-yard field goal. His missed kick was one play after Russell Wilson took a 13-yard sack on third down that coach Pete Carroll said the quarterback cannot take. The consecutive mistakes cost the Seahawks having a two-score lead with 7 1/2 minutes left in their 25-24 home loss to Chicago in the snow Sunday at Lumen Field.
“None of this is a topic if I put the ball through the uprights,” Myers wrote on his Twitter account Monday evening. “My job is to come in and put the ball in no matter where it’s at. It’s on me, so the media can just leave this alone.”
Myers missed two field goals in October when Seattle lost 13-10 to New Orleans. He missed an extra point that might have enabled the Seahawks to avoid having to go to overtime, in which they lost to Tennessee in September.
Seattle is 0-5 in games decided by a field goal or less this season. That’s one of many ways how a defending NFC West champion from 2020 has face-planted to 5-10 with two games remaining in this lost season.
The Seahawks with Myers were 5-1 in games decided by three points or fewer in the 2019 and ‘20 seasons. That was when they were making the playoffs and, last season, winning the NFC West.
Myers set the franchise record with 37 consecutive made field goals, including 24 for 24 in the 2020 season. His streak ended with his miss in the first half at Minnesota this September.
Wilson had a third and 4 at the Chicago 8-yard line, and a 24-17 lead, Sunday. The quarterback had three, potentially game-sealing points in his back pocket. A scramble run, an incomplete pass, no gain — anything but what happened — and the Seahawks had a chip-shot field goal for Myers on the next snap for a two-score lead on the 4-10 Bears.
On the third down Wilson saw DK Metcalf outside to his route. The Bears had a cornerback on him, and a safety behind that, for bracket coverage. Wilson then looked at tight end Gerald Everett over the middle. Also covered. Running back DeeJay Dallas might have been open 2 yards past the line of scrimmage, but not by a lot.
So Wilson did what he’s done for many of his best moments over 10 seasons. He tried to spin away from a deep, up-the-field pass rusher, Robert Quinn. Wilson said later he wanted extend the play and give improvisational guru Tyler Lockett time to get open on one of his uncanny improvisational routes into the end zone for a touchdown.
Except Quinn is no pedestrian defensive end. He’s a former All-Pro and three-time Pro Bowl sack man. Now 33, Wilson could not get away from him. Quinn threw down down for a 13-yard sack.
Instead of that 26-yard field goal, Myers came onto the snowy field for a 39-yard kick for points. It’s a try a veteran NFL kicker should make. But the snowy field and a biting wind sometimes to 20 mph didn’t help.
Myers missed.
Carroll criticized.
“Eight-yard line,” Carroll said, for emphasis. “So it was as short as you can get on the field goal. That’s as makeable as can be, and then we’ve got to hit the field goal, too.
“That’s part of the thinking and mentality that we practice that stuff all the time, and we just didn’t do that. There was a clear situation where we gave them an opportunity to get some momentum from us.
“In that situation that third down in field-goal range to go up by 10, we’ve got to get rid of the football. We can’t take a sack there, and we need to look at what happened on that play.
“Again, that’s what I’m talking about. I’ve got to get that done. I’ve got to get them to execute that way. I’ve got to get Russ to pull that off. I’ve got to get the coaches to make sure we reminded him well enough so that didn’t happen.
“You sail out it out of the end zone right there, kick the field goal.”
Wilson explained after the game he was trying to do what he’d done for most of his first nine, wondrous years as the Seahawks’ starter. That is, before this season. It’s the team’s first losing one since 2011, the last year before it drafted him. Wilson has missed his first three games of his career to injury, to the middle finger of his throwing hand that required surgery in October.
“The risk-reward was, trying to score a touchdown,” Wilson said. “We’ve done it so many times, to Tyler, to other guys. Unfortunately we weren’t able to make that play. Then, obviously, the situation happens where we don’t end up making (the field goal).
“You know, I was trying to play ball like I know how to do, and always do, and try to move around and see if we can find a touchdown there. Especially that close. It’s one of those things, if I can run it in there, if I can slide to the left, slide to the right, move some guy open, touchdown.”
Some have taken those two reactions as an example of the “disconnect” between Wilson and Carroll. That’s how an online posting from KIRO AM, the Seahawks’ flagship radio station in Seattle, put it Monday. That was the particular assertion that prompted Myers to react Monday evening.
In previous, non-COVID seasons, Myers has always made himself available to talk after Seahawks games, win or lose.
Monday he made himself available in a unique, very 2021 way.
