RENTON — Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll spent Monday reviewing the video of his team’s 27-24 overtime loss at Cincinnati on Sunday, and he kept coming to the same unfortunate conclusion:
“Well, no matter how many times I look at this, I can’t get the end to change,” Carroll said Monday at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center.
“We’ve done a lot of work on this game, just to kind of figure it out, come to some conclusions about some stuff, and we’re still working on it,” Carroll continued. “It was a very disappointing loss, very disappointing that we went ready to capture an opportunity against a really good team and the setting and all of that. We came out and played, really, our best football for the most part, and then they captured the momentum and the energy they needed to finish the game off, and we didn’t. So they get a great win and we don’t. It’s tough.”
Seattle was on the verge of what could have been a season-defining victory against the Bengals. The Seahawks, after opening the season with back-to-back road losses against the St. Louis Rams and Green Bay Packers, got themselves back to .500 with home wins against the Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions. However, both those victories came against teams that were winless at the time. Therefore, Sunday’s game, which was on the road against the undefeated Bengals, served as the true litmus test of whether Seattle had turned things around.
For three quarters the answer to that question was an emphatic, “Yes.” The Seahawks led 24-7 going into the fourth quarter and had Cincinnati’s high-flying offense grounded.
But the game took a dramatic turn in the fourth quarter, as the Seahawks’ offense shut down and Seattle’s defense opened up. The Bengals scored 17 points on their three fourth-quarter possessions, getting the tying field goal on the final play of regulation to force overtime. Cincinnati won it when Mike Nugent banked a 42-yard field goal in off the left upright, leaving the Seahawks to ponder how they let this one slip away.
“(It was) pretty quiet,” Carroll said, about the mood around the team Monday. “Everybody’s pretty disappointed, for obvious reasons, and the whole room feels it. Everybody’s sharing in it.
“The conversation already went to Wednesday,” Carroll continued. “Let’s get back, let’s get going, and let’s take the things that we have improved at and make sure we own those so that we carry them forward.”
It’s still puzzling how the game turned so dramatically in the fourth quarter. When the fourth quarter began Seattle was dominating in both total yards (358-189) and yards per play (9.4-4.1). However, both teams had five possessions in the fourth quarter and overtime. With those five possessions the Bengals gained 230 yards on 33 plays (7.0 per play) and scored four times, while the Seahawks managed a meager 39 yards on 19 plays (2.1 per play) and were shut out.
Carroll said there wasn’t any single reason why the game’s tide shifted so abruptly.
“Any sequence in there (could have changed things),” Carroll said. “We could have stopped them, made a third-down stop on defense. We had two third-and-4s and a third-and-2 that we couldn’t convert on a day when we were making some third-down conversions and handling those situations. By design, we were trying to stay in third-and-6 or less against these guys, and we got there. Then we didn’t finish them. Any one of those might have been the difference in the game. It’s just frustrating that we didn’t get any of them when we needed them.”
Despite the disappointment of the loss, Carroll preferred to accentuate the positives from Sunday’s loss. Carroll was particularly pleased with the performance of the offensive line. The line came under fire during the week, following a performance against Detroit in which quarterback Russell Wilson was sacked six times and constantly under pressure. But Wilson was protected better against the Bengals, and the line opened up running lanes that allowed the Seahawks to gain 200 yards on the ground.
“Without question the offensive line of scrimmage was really the best it’s been,” Carroll said. “We came off the ball well, we ran the football the way we like to, we got the turns — 30 carries — we ran for a lot of yards and all. That felt like we’re accustomed.”
Still, Carroll is convinced that the Seahawks, at 2-3, are playing better than when the team was struggling with a 3-3 start last season. Last year Seattle pulled things together, finished out the season 9-1, and reached a second consecutive Super Bowl. Carroll is hoping this season’s team can do the same.
“After six games last year I thought we were floundering,” Carroll said. “Guys were trying to do the right thing, but we weren’t really connected in the way you need to be to really feed off one another energetically. That had to take a whole new step forward. We’re connected differently at this time. But we still have to improve our play. I’m hoping that marker stays with us so we can get moving. This is the week to get moving as opposed to the next week, we’re running out of time for making a real turnaround here early.”
Injury update
Carroll said he expects No’ 1 running back Marshawn Lynch to return from his hamstring injury in time for next Sunday’s home game against Carolina. Lynch missed the previous two games because of the injury.
Seattle had two players suffer injuries during Sunday’s game against Cincinnati. Defensive tackle Jordan Hill suffered a strained quadriceps muscle and missed the second half. Carroll said Hill may miss a couple weeks. Linebacker Bobby Wagner missed two plays because of a strained pectoral muscle, though he returned to the game. Carroll did not know whether Wagner would miss any games because of the injury.
Carroll also said cornerback Tharold Simon, who was placed on injured reserve Saturday so that the Seahawks could sign running back Rod Smith off the practice squad, is set to undergo surgery on his dislocated toe.
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