In case you weren’t watching tonight’s game, let me offer this summary: punt, punt, turnover, stuffed at the goal line, punt, punt. Mix in a bunch of penalties, and you have the first-half performance of the No. 1 offense.
“I was disappointed the way this went tonight,” Pete Carroll said after his team’s 20-7 loss. “After a full week getting ready, I didn’t feel like we got very much done.”
Carroll did praise the play of backup QB Charlie Whitehurst, who led the Seahawks to their only touchdown, but didn’t sound like he is ready to open up a quarterback competition.
“I need to look at the film and see why things happened, but I’m not in that mindset at all,” Carroll said. “I love that Charlie played well, and we need to give Tarvaris a chance to play well too with the guys around him playing well.”
That was a reference to the fact that Jackson spent the first half getting beat up thanks to bad pass protection, and also didn’t get much help from the running game. Oh, and let’s not forget Golden Tate’s two dropped passes, including one that led to a pick-six. Did Jackson play particularly well? No. But was it his fault? It didn’t seem like it.
“He was fighting for his life a little bit<" Carroll said. "I need to see what happened, but they made it hard on him. I thought he did some very good things, showed he could get out of trouble and save a play. I’m not in any way disappointed with what he did. We need to help him. We need to protect him better, and we didn’t run the ball much either."
Jackson didn’t use the mistakes around him as an excuse, but rather said the whole offense has some work to do.
“We had some miscues, but that’s what the preseason is for. . . The whole offense has some work to do, and we’ll go back to practice and try to get better.
“As a whole offense, we just have to get better. We’re going to get it together. We’ve got a lot of guys learning right now, we’ve got a lot of young guys. So we’re just trying to teach so we can get everything going and get the offense clicking. . . The first team, we didn’t put any points on the board last week as well as this week, so we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
The good news for Seattle is that it appeared to escape significant injuries. Carroll said all three starting linebackers came out of the game a little beat up, but didn’t seem to think any were serious.
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