RENTON — If the Seahawks are looking for a slogan for the 2014 season, they can probably do better than what head coach Pete Carroll said about his team’s win over Oakland a day after Seattle held on for a 30-24 victory.
“We survived the game and got through it, and the quarterback didn’t get killed,” Carroll said. “We made it through it, and on we go.”
While, “2014 Seahawks: We survived the game and the quarterback didn’t get killed” would make for a pretty funny T-shirt, it’s hardly an ideal assessment of a team’s performance. In the case of Sunday’s game, however, it was a pretty fair one for a team playing with so many injuries that the Seahawks couldn’t even dress 46 healthy players, the amount allowed by league rules.
The good news for the Seahawks is that reinforcements should be coming this week. Carroll said Monday that anywhere from four to eight players who were unavailable Sunday should be back this week.
The group will likely include cornerback Jeremy Lane, who has been practicing the past few weeks and is now eligible to come off short-term injured reserve, center Max Unger, who has missed four games with a foot injury, defensive tackle Jordan Hill, who has missed three games with an ankle injury, safety Kam Chancellor, who sat out Sunday’s game with a groin injury, and his backup, Jeron Johnson, who was out with a concussion.
“It’s a big turn, and it depends on how much good fortune we have, but we’ll have four guys back likely who weren’t ready for us this week, and we could have eight,” Carroll said. “So it’s amazing that it could be like that, but we’re on the verge of getting some guys back. Pretty realistic is to get four guys back.”
Carroll later amended that realistic total to five when talking about Chancellor. Carroll said both Chancellor and left tackle Russell Okung, who was out with a calf injury, “both feel like they’re ready to play, so we’ll see what happens.”
Getting five or more players back, many of them starters, would be huge for the Seahawks. After a home game against the New York Giants Sunday, Seattle faces a brutal closing stretch to its season.
The Seahawks survived, as Carroll put it, despite missing so many players. But they can’t expect to keep winning with their current injury situation. Which on Sunday was so dire that injured players like Chancellor and Unger were active, not because they were going to play, but simply because the NFL only allows teams to declare seven players inactive on game day.
“I don’t ever remember ever being in this situation,” Carroll said. “We didn’t have 46 guys in this game. … That was a very unusual situation and fortunately we should jump right back out of that.”
Among the players on the fence this week are cornerback Byron Maxwell, who has a calf injury, and linebacker Malcolm Smith, who has a groin injury. On Smith, Carroll said, “It’s going to be a late-week recovery if he can do it. It’s looking like it might be two weeks, but he’s one of those guys who could have a shot at it.”
If Smith is out again, and with Bobby Wagner still recovering from a turf toe injury, Carroll said they feel good about the combination of rookie Brock Coyle and Kevin Pierre-Louis filling in.
“I think the whole thing worked out well,” Carroll said. “We were pleased with it. Brock and K.J. (Wright) handled all the calls and assignments out there, Brock did a nice job, made his tackles, and Kevin had a chance to play in third-down situations and nickel stuff and he did real well. So it worked out fine.”
And speaking of Wagner, the news was good from Carroll on the middle linebacker’s progress, though not good enough for Wagner to return this week.
“Bobby’s improving quickly,” Carroll said. “He’s doing well; I don’t know what that means, days wise, but he’s really jumped back, he’s come back ahead of schedule, and we’re going to get him back pretty quick. It doesn’t look like this week.
As for Zach Miller, who is recovering from ankle surgery, Carroll said the tight end is making encouraging progress, but that there’s still not a definitive timeline.
The Seahawks didn’t sustain many new injuries in Sunday’s game, but Carroll said it’s “wait and see” on guard James Carpenter, who injured his ankle late in the third quarter when running back Marshawn Lynch fell into him at the end of a run.
“I haven’t heard anything updated on Carp,” Carroll said. “He’s got an ankle sprain of some sort, we don’t know how serious. He was in the boot today.”
Wide receiver Doug Baldwin came out of the game with a groin injury, though it did not keep him from finishing the game, and Carroll said, “Doug was a thumbs up that he’s going to be OK, but we’ll see.” Defensive end Greg Scruggs is day-to-day with a sore knee, though Carroll noted Scruggs didn’t injure his surgically repaired knee, but rather that he was sore.
More changes in return game?
While rookie Paul Richardson has looked good in two games as Seattle’s kick returner, the punt return job doesn’t appear to be settled yet. In two games without Bryan Walters, one because he had a concussion and one because he was released, the Seahawks have tried Richard Sherman and Doug Baldwin in that role.
And while Baldwin did have a 38-yard return that set up a field goal, he also made the rather questionable decision to field a punt at his own 4-yard line, giving the Seahawks the ball at their own 2 after a backwards return.
“We did OK,” Carroll said when asked about the return game. “You saw Doug made a decision backed up that we’d like to do otherwise, so he’s still learning. We’ll figure that out. We’ll see what happens this week, you’ll see some things that occur during the week. Foreshadowing.”
So what is Carroll hinting at with his foreshadowing? Well one possibility could be the re-signing of Walters, who was released Saturday so the Seahawks could free up a roster spot to add safety Terrence Parks off the practice squad. With Chancellor and Johnson likely back, the Seahawks no longer need that depth, so if Carroll prefers Walters for punt returns, he could be back this week.
Wilson not “quite as sharp”
A day after quarterback Russell Wilson assessed his day by saying, “I don’t think I played well at all, for whatever reason,” noting that he wasn’t sure of the cause for those struggles, Carroll offered his take on Wilson’s day having studied the film.
“He wasn’t connecting like he normally does,” Carroll said. “He was just a little high with the ball, maybe a little quick getting rid of it. The timing was not normal, but that’s already gone, the game’s already behind us as far as I’m concerned. We move ahead and get back on track again and expect we’ll do really well and we’ll learn from the experience and benefit from it. He had a normal person’s day; he wasn’t quite as sharp as he has been.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
