What has occurred to the Seahawks?
The franchise’s perennial excellence has been on pause via 10 video games this season. The Seahawks enter Monday evening’s recreation at Washington with a surprising 3-7 report and are reeling, having misplaced 5 of their previous six video games.
Relationship again to 2012, Seattle has had 9 consecutive successful seasons, making the playoffs in eight of these whereas successful one Tremendous Bowl and dropping one other.
Sitting in final place within the NFC West is international territory for the Seahawks, who’re a loss away from nearly eliminating themselves from the playoff race.
The final time Seattle did not make the playoffs was in 2017, once they went 9-7. The final time the Seahawks had been 3-7 was 2009, the yr earlier than Pete Carroll turned head coach and turned the franchise into one of many mannequin successful franchises within the NFL.
Of late, Carroll, who’s all the time romped the sidelines with the youthful exuberance of a golden retriever working round at a park, has at occasions appeared much more just like the oldest head coach within the league, which he’s at 70.
After final Sunday’s 23-13 dwelling loss to a Cardinals workforce that was with out beginning quarterback Kyler Murray (changed by journeyman Colt McCoy), an exasperated Carroll abruptly walked out of his postgame press conference solely to return about 20 minutes later and apologize to reporters.
“I’m simply not any good at this,” Carroll mentioned of coping with dropping after returning to the interview room. “I’m not ready for this. It’s new territory.’’
The day after the sport, Carroll carried out a workforce assembly to ask a few of his veteran gamers — corresponding to linebacker Bobby Wagner, quarterback Russell Wilson and offensive lineman Duane Brown — to talk up and air their emotions.
“We’ve bought a problem that we’re dealing with that we’ve bought to show,’’ Carroll mentioned. “We wish to flip this factor as quick as we will. And we don’t have a second to waste.’’
A lot of the Seahawks’ slide could be attributed to Wilson being out of the lineup for a month with a finger harm. However he has been again the previous two video games, certainly one of which was a shutout loss towards the Packers (the primary time in a decade Seattle has been shut out) and the second was final Sunday at dwelling, the place Seattle scored just one landing.
These two losses marked simply the third time in Wilson’s 10-year profession that he’s gone two consecutive video games with out throwing a TD cross.
The offense is changing simply 32.4 p.c of its third-down conversions and the Seahawks are averaging simply 55 offensive performs per recreation, which is tied into their poor manufacturing on third downs.
That, too, is sporting down their protection, which has been on the sphere a median of virtually 73 performs per recreation. Perhaps it’s associated, possibly it’s coincidence, however the Seahawks have been outscored 78-50 within the fourth quarter this season.
Perhaps it’s too early to declare this the tip of an period in Seattle. However possibly it’s not, with basic supervisor John Schneider seemingly misplaced his contact unearthing terrific expertise within the draft.
The Seahawks don’t actually have a 2022 first-round draft choose, as a result of it was dealt to the Jets for security Jamal Adams — who hasn’t been the difference-making participant Seattle hoped he’d be when the workforce made that all-in, win-now commerce.
“We’ve bought to be higher,’’ Wilson instructed reporters. “The reality, too, is we’re higher than what we’ve been enjoying. And the reality is that we additionally consider in that we could be higher as a collective group. And the reality is, we bought seven video games to go.’’
