Pete Carroll sees Seahawks’ uprising in Detroit an example of his team’s best trait: grit
When Pete Carroll befriended scholar Angela Duckworth and brought her to the Seahawks, this is the game he had in mind.
When the veteran coach turned “Always Compete” into his daily mantra for his players, made it the title of his book on philosophies for football, business and life, this is the result he was seeking.
In Carroll’s mind, Seahawks 37, Lions 31 in overtime absolutely was proof of the characteristic he values most in his teams: Grit.
“Oh, God, this is why I’m so thrilled about capturing this day because this is as hard as it gets. This is as hard as it can possibly be,” Carroll said Sunday following one of the more eye-opening wins of his 13 years running the Seahawks.
The Lions were national football darlings for beating the defending Super Bowl-champion Chiefs in Kansas City in the NFL opener. Detroit was 9-2 in its last 11 games dating to last season. The Lions had a potent offense, an attacking defense and a sold-out crowd that was booing everything the Seahawks did — including a single position group coming out for pregame warmups an hour before kickoffs — and roaring like Motown at its peak.
Yet the same Seahawks who face-planted the week before, losing at home 30-13 to the rebuilding Los Angeles Rams in the opening game to blunt an offseason full of huge expectations, tamed these previously rampaging Lions.
“Coming off beating the world champs on the road and starting the season and all of that and these guys were on fire — they were healthy enough, the whole thing,” Carroll said. “So, that’s because we respect them so much. That’s not for any other reason, but we have so much respect for coach (Dan) Campbell and the way that he does his stuff.
“And that (Lions) team, it just stacked up all of these opportunities for us to see if we could meet it.
“And it took a long time, but we got it done.”
Odds against Seahawks
They did it starting two backup tackles, Jake Curhan and Stone Forsythe. They were playing because Charles Cross and Abe Lucas are injured. They did it with a benched cornerback, Tre Brown, coming in as an injury replacement and making two game-turning plays in the fourth quarter.
They did it by taking an early lead, then falling behind by halftime. The Seahawks surged again, going up 31-21 when Brown got Seattle’s first sack of the season, on a cornerback blitz in the fourth quarter. Then Brown became the first opponent in nearly 400 throws by Detroit’s Jared Goff to intercept one his passes. Brown returned his pick 40 yards for a touchdown with 8 minutes left.
Carroll’s guys then squandered all of that lead by allowing Detroit to score 10 points in the final 3:08.
Yet Curhan and Forsythe kept repelling roaming, charging Lions pass rusher Aidan Hutchinson and Detroit’s blitzers. That gave Geno Smith the time to look at second and third receivers on the only drive of overtime. On third and 6 on Seattle’s side of midfield, Smith looked to his left. Then he looked center. Then on the right he spotted DK Metcalf breaking open late for a 16-yard completion. That propelled the Seahawks to Smith’s winning touchdown pass to Tyler Lockett, also on third down.
The Grit Down.
On defense, the team that allowed the Rams to convert eight of their first 10 third downs and 11 of 17 overall last week stopped the Lions twice on three attempts trying to extend drives on fourth downs.
In second quarter, on fourth and 4 at the Seattle 31-yard line, Seahawks debuting rookie cornerback Devon Witherspoon deftly leaped over Sam Laporta’s shoulder and batted Goff’s pass away from the Lions’ rookie tight end. That kept the game tied at 7.
On fourth and 2 from the Detroit 45 in the final minute of the third quarter, rookie linebacker Derick Hall rushed through the line up the middle to force Goff to run away and throw wildly wide of his receiver. It was such a poor throw, Witherspoon got away with pass interference tripping Josh Reynolds as the ball sailed past because officials ruled the pass uncatchable.
That stop on fourth down gave the Seahawks the short field from which Smith drove them to his touchdown pass of 3 yards to Tyler Lockett. That put Seattle back in front, 24-21 early in the fourth quarter.
“They’re like turnovers,” Carroll said of the fourth-down stops by his defense. “I don’t know if you saw our bench, those guys were all revved up for those opportunities. That was our shot to get the ball, as well as their shot to make it, and our guys took it to heart, and went for it.
“We got a couple of them, and they were enormous...our guys totally capitalized on the opportunity.”
They got conventional turnovers, too.
Tre Brown returns
Brown got the first Seahawks sack of the season, on a cornerback blitz midway through the fourth quarter. On the next play, Brown and safety Julian Love saw the Lions in a formation Seattle knew from film study often meant a “Texas” route, a quick slant pattern underneath deeper wide-receiver routes, of the backfield by running back Jahmyr Gibbs. Brown handed off coverage of a deeper route to Love and ran at Gibbs’ shorter slan. Brown was late and behind Gibbs. But so was Goff’s pass.
As he closed on Gibbs, Goff threw the ball right to Brown instead of his running back.
After he caught the first interception thrown by Goff in 383 attempts, the third-longest such streak and NFL history and 30 from the league record, Brown had no one outside to his right to stop him from a touchdown and a 31-21 lead for the Seahawks.
“I chased that route and looked up and saw the ball was on my hands,” Brown said.
The 25-year-old second-round pick in 2021 said it was the first time in his football life he had a sack and an interception in a game.
The first interception of Brown’s injury-hampered career came after he’d been benched. Witherspoon, the fifth pick in this year’s draft, started for the first time at left cornerback following his hamstring injury.
Brown had the starting job late in his rookie season two years ago. Then a knee injury sidelined him into the 2022 season. By then, Michael Jackson had taken his left-cornerback job.
Sunday, Brown grinded his way back. Again.
“Just stay ready. Just stay focused,” Brown said. “It’s a long season. I’ve been in this league long enough to see guys — we play a physical game. You’ve just got to stay ready. I saw it myself (in 2021). ...
“I just stay ready, so whatever happens when my name’s called I go out there and make those plays.”
Lockett was steady, as usual. He had two touchdowns, in the fourth quarter and the winning one on a pass from Smith to end the first drive of overtime and the game.
“As always,” Carroll said.
“I just hope he can keep playing forever.”
Lockett said the team’s approach to get past the Rams, to show that grit Carroll seeks, was to quit focusing on what these Seahawks may be and be who they are.
“Forget expectations,” Lockett said. “Just go out and play ball...at a high level.”
Perhaps the truest indicator of grit is resilience.
Smith said this team has that, too.
“We’re a resilient bunch,” Smith said. “We fought back, in the noise, on the road, against a really good team and we found a way to win.”
This story was originally published September 18, 2023 at 6:52 AM.
