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https://theathletic.com/1273577/2019/10 ... hawks-yet/

Pete Carroll’s inconsistent early season hasn’t cost Seahawks … yet

By Michael-Shawn Dugar

Each of the Seahawks had moments to learn from after their Week 3 home loss to the Saints.

The coach wasn’t exempt. Pete Carroll admitted to having a “bad” day that contributed to Seattle’s only loss of the season. But learning from and correcting those mistakes is only possible if the right lessons are learned, and through five games, Carroll doesn’t appear to be applying the correct lessons in certain situations. This hasn’t really cost the 4-1 Seahawks yet, and mistakes will be made over the course of 16 games, but employing the proper protocol to minimize mistakes can be the difference between a championship run and a first-round exit in the playoffs.

Let’s go back to the Saints game. At the end of the first half against New Orleans, Carroll swallowed a pair of timeouts instead of using one after tight end Nick Vannett’s nine-yard reception that moved the ball out to Seattle’s 30 with fewer than 30 seconds remaining. The clock continued to run and by the time Russell Wilson completed a 54-yard heave to rookie receiver DK Metcalf deep in Saints territory, time had expired.

“The first play, we stuttered a little bit and then Russ had to dump the ball off,” Carroll said the next day. “Now, the time’s already down and you’re not sure if you’re going to get it. Is it worth taking the shot? Sure enough, the second play, Russ finds a way to bomb. Had I known that was going to happen, we would’ve just thrown the timeout right off the bat. You look back, it’s easy now to see what we should’ve done. We didn’t quite get off like we like to at the start of it.”

It shouldn’t have mattered whether or not Carroll knew a big play was coming, a timeout should have come immediately after Vannett’s catch, if for no other reason than to discuss a course of action. If Carroll didn’t feel like Seattle gained enough yardage on first down to warrant another play, then Wilson should have taken a knee to end the half. Instead, it was a wasted opportunity in a tightly contested game.

Prior to that drive, Seattle elected to keep its offense on the field on fourth-and-1 from the New Orleans 41 in a 13-7 game with 2:37 remaining in the second quarter. The Seahawks trotted out a jumbo package, including fullback Nick Bellore, and Chris Carson lost a yard on a run that had little chance at success from the beginning. New Orleans used a series of quick passes to move the ball downfield and scored on a 29-yard screen pass to close the half.

After the game, Carroll said he didn’t regret going for it there, declaring, “that’s an OK one to go for it if you’re aggressive and you’re going for it.” But in a similar situation against the Rams in Week 5, that aggressiveness disappeared.

Leading 14-6 with 1:38 remaining in the first half, Carroll chose to attempt a 48-yard field goal from the Rams 30. Jason Myers pushed it wide right, and Los Angeles went 62 yards in eight plays, scoring a touchdown to cut the deficit to 14-13 just before halftime.

Carroll explained his reasoning the following morning on his weekly radio show.

“I try to take into account everything and then get to the point where I’ve evaluated the variables one way or the other and then go for my gut, just trust this is the way to do it,” he said Friday. “In this game in particular, I wanted to make sure I did my part to play this as a championship game, meaning that you’re counting on your defense, you’re counting on your offense, you’re counting on the length of the game and not get into a moment that makes you feel desperate to go for it.”

Carroll said it would have been “nice” to add three points at that point in the game, but upon revisiting the situation, his biggest regret was giving LA the ball back, since the idea at the beginning of his team’s possession was to play keep-away.

“I had no question that J Myers was going to kick that thing and make it,” Carroll said. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, if he makes it or misses it,’ that wasn’t the question, to me. I wanted to believe in almost conservatively attacking this team like we know we’re going to beat them. That was kind of what the feeling was. I went into the game thinking that way and wanted to carry through, that was my first thought.”

But make or miss, Carroll chose an outcome that would have given LA the ball with two timeouts and a chance to score. Assuming a touchback on the kickoff — the case on all six of Myers’ kickoffs that day — LA would have taken over at its 25-yard line with a little more than 90 seconds remaining. If the goal was to maintain possession, Carroll should have gone with the only option with at least one outcome in which LA doesn’t immediately get the ball back (also, not accounting for a missed kick is irresponsible, all scenarios need to be considered in those instances). A consistent thought process should be followed in fourth-down situations, and that doesn’t appear to be the case.

The same can be said of Carroll’s challenges. He’s challenged a defensive pass interference call, or lack thereof, in four of Seattle’s five games, winning only one, albeit an important one against the Steelers that flipped the field and led to a touchdown.

When Carroll called lost a DPI challenge in that same game, he lamented afterward that he wished he’d instructed the officials to also review whether an offensive player pushed off linebacker Mychal Kendricks. But without that instruction, Carroll was under the impression they were only reviewing his objection to the defensive PI call on Kendricks.

The next week against New Orleans, Carroll challenged a DPI non-call following a failed fourth-and-1 pass to receiver Malik Turner late in the fourth quarter. Carroll was hoping the officials would review the entire play and see that Turner was grabbed prior to Wilson throwing the pass. During the review, CBS color analyst Tony Romo pointed out the issue in that thinking.

“You see a little grab of the waist there, but the problem is you can only challenge pass interference if the ball is out of (the quarterback’s) hand,” the former Cowboys QB said. “You can’t challenge holding — it’s only pass interference.”

Carroll appeared to be aware of this when asked about it after the game, but he threw the challenge flag anyway.

“It’s interesting that they say that they say they’re going to review the whole entire play, but they’re only looking at OPI/DPI as far as I understand it,” Carroll said.

Feeling out a new rule is one thing, but misinterpreting what can and cannot be challenged is difficult to justify — as is throwing challenge flags out of frustration, which Carroll admitted to doing when he believed Rams receiver Brandin Cooks pushed off Griffin on a crucial third-down catch in the fourth quarter. Replays depicted Cooks doing exactly that, but it always felt unlikely the officials were going to retroactively throw a flag there, a point that was relayed to Carroll by his assistants upstairs.

“Sometimes you just do it because you got to do it, you got to take a shot a it,” Carroll said on the radio Friday afternoon. “That’s a huge play right there. We get off the field right there. It’s an enormous play. But I’m learning.

“I’m kind of stubborn about it, really, to tell you the truth. I know it’s pass interference but I’m thinking it and the guys are telling me, ‘I don’t think they’re going to call it.’ Ah, screw it, I’m going for it anyway. Sometimes you just feel like you want to do that. We’re learning.”

What Carroll learns from these mistakes moving forward will be critical for the Seahawks, who don’t have the same margins for error that the Legion of Boom-era teams had. Seattle’s style of play lends itself to close games — if your goal to is to have a chance to win in the fourth quarter, then the other team will probably have a chance, too. In 2017, all but one of Seattle’s losses were decided by one possession. Last season, all six losses (including the playoff loss to Dallas) were one-score games. This year, all but one of Seattle’s game featured one-possession outcomes.

Game mismanagement hasn’t become incredibly costly just yet, but it seems only a matter of time before an ill-advised challenge (and the subsequent loss of a timeout) or the use of a flawed and/or inconsistent thought process on fourth downs comes back to hurt this team. When the games are coming down to the final few minutes, it’s not just the players who need to be sound in their decision-making.

This is the conundrum Seattle finds itself with Carroll, who, it should be noted, is excellent at key aspects of his position: Seattle’s locker-room culture is touted as one of the most player-friendly in the league; Carroll brings the best out of his players by empowering them to be the best version of themselves, however that takes form, and his teams almost always have an opportunity to win in the fourth quarter, a testament to Carroll’s messaging about finishing and always competing to the end. He and general manager John Schneider have built a sustained contender here.

The best (and winningest) coach in franchise history is allowed to be flawed. And he has certainly earned himself some leeway over the years, but when you establish championship expectations, the man calling the shots needs to do what he asks of his players: execute at a high level.