RENTON — On the day after, Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll was lamenting what could have been.
The Seahawks were licking their wounds Monday following their season-opening 34-31 overtime loss Sunday at St. Louis. And Carroll spent his Monday press conference at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center reflecting on how Seattle lost a game it had well within its grasp.
“After looking at this game, it was a really well-played game by the Rams, they did a lot of good things and got a good win,” Carroll said. “But the way we look at it is we never should have lost that game. We had plenty of chances and opportunities to really take the game in command and didn’t seize those opportunities. We came down at the end of the football game in the fourth quarter and in overtime and we had chances on both sides of the ball, so we didn’t finish the way we needed to.”
Seattle won both the battles of turnovers (3-1) and time of possession (37:28-28:32), and the Seahawks led by a touchdown with less than a minute remaining in the game. However, Seattle wasn’t able to close it out.
“When you have games where you get a plus turnover ratio, you score on defense, and you score in the kicking game, any one of those three factors generally wins the game for you,” Carroll said. “We had all of those, time of possession, all kinds of stuff. They made some plays and did some things at the right time that we didn’t, so it got away from us. It was a frustrating game in that regard.”
The Seahawks has moments to regret in all three facets of the game. On offense, it was the inability to convert in the red zone. Seattle drove inside St. Louis’ 20-yard line four times Sunday, yet came away with just one touchdown.
“Not good enough,” was Carroll’s evaluation of Seattle’s performance in the red zone. “We’re one-out-of-four on touchdowns so that’s not as good as we want to be. We also got knocked out of a couple field-goal opportunities because we were right there on the fringe and didn’t get it. So we need to do better there, we anticipate that we will, and it’s a big area of focus for us.”
On defense it was allowing explosive plays. Last season Seattle allowed a league-low 32 passing plays of 20 yards or more in its 16 games. On Sunday the Seahawks gave up eight passing plays of 20-plus yards in a single contest.
“That was one of the differences in the game that was significant,” Carroll said. “That’s out of the norm for us. They did a nice job getting the ball behind us, they did well on some screens and some one-on-one situations and made some extra yards. They did a good job with it, and when you allow that the field position changes.”
As for special teams, the apparent onside kick attempt to begin overtime didn’t exactly go as planned. Especially considering it wasn’t actually supposed to be an onside kick attempt.
“We were kicking the ball deep to the big tackle (in the second bank of players on the Rams’ return team),” Carroll explained. “We wanted him to return it and see what he could do with it. It was something we had in the game plan. They left him there throughout the game so there was a shot at it. The ball was supposed to go all the way down to the 25-yard line, that didn’t happen. We just missed the kick.”
One thing Carroll didn’t regret, however, was the play call on the game’s final play. Seattle had a fourth-and-1 and ran the read option, with quarterback Russell Wilson handing the ball off to running back Marshawn Lynch. Lynch was stuffed on the play to end the game. It was the opposite choice of what the Seahawks elected to do in the Super Bowl when, needing one yard with the game on the line, Seattle dialed up a slant pass that was intercepted.
But Carroll merely credited the Rams defense on Sunday’s last play.
“They won the line of scrimmage on that play and did a nice job attacking,” Carroll said. “We just weren’t able to get the crease we needed. It’s a good play for us, a good concept for us, it’s been really successful for us for a long time. We went with a real base thought and they played it better than we did.”
Carroll is hoping all the “what ifs” serve to focus the Seahawks as they prepare for next Sunday’s NFC Championship Game rematch against the Green Bay Packers.
“Hopefully we’ll toughen up and be hardened by it and just be better for it,” Carroll said. “And we’ll get ready for an amazing match-up going to Green Bay.”
Check out Nick Patterson’s Seattle Sidelines blog at http://www.heraldnet.com/seattlesidelines, and follow him on Twitter at @NickHPatterson.
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