A few highlights from Pete Carroll’s Monday press conference.
—On the health of Russell Okung, who has a bruised lung, the result of hit he took during an interception return: “He feels quite a bit better today, but we’ve got to be cautious and make sure we take care of him, so in a couple of days we’ll see how he’s feeling.”
Asked if Okung has any chance of playing, Carroll said, “There’s always a chance.” Though that felt a bit like this type of “chance.”
“He’s got a bruised lung from the hit that he took on the interception,” Carroll continued on Okung. “He was real uncomfortable initially, so they took all the precautions and took him out of here (to the hospital) to get him checked and he recovered pretty well from that and got home pretty soon after that. Last night he was feeling pretty good, I talked to him fairly late last night and he was feeling a lot better than he did during the game. So we’ll just see what happens and see what the docs say during the next couple of days.”
If you happened to notice on the TV broadcast that Okung shoved a member of the training staff, here’s what Carroll said about that: “I think he was just frustrated with the fact that he wasn’t going to be able to go back in. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
Asked if Okung’s injury could be a long term one, Carroll said, “It sounds like it’s a week or two unless we get a really good report. We’re going to kind of hope for the best and see how he does. He really wants to play if he can, and if he can’t, we’ll find out. But we’ll hold a good thought here.”
—On the play of Alvin Bailey, who filled in for Okung in the second half and who likely will start against Arizona: “He made it through it. He had some good plays and some bad plays. He did some good things but struggled a little bit too. He wasn’t on his best game, but he made it through it and managed to get through the game. It’ll be a lot better, if he’s going to play this week, to get the whole week of preparation getting all the reps and all that. He’s done OK in the past for us at tackle, so we’re going to count on him to do that if he’s called on to play.”
—On Max Unger, who has missed four games with an ankle/knee injury: “It’s a day at a time now. The fact that he practiced means he can practice again Wednesday, and we’ll see how that goes. He’s real anxious to get back. We’re still hoping that he’ll make some more improvement though; he wasn’t at 100 percent ready or he’d have played in the game.”
—Carroll sounded a bit more optimistic on Cooper Helfet, who has missed three games with an ankle injury, saying, “Coop made it back to practice last week and should be pretty good to go this week. We’ll see how it goes again on Wednesday. That’s not for sure yet.”
—On TE Tony Moeaki, who injured his shoulder in Sunday’s game: “Tony banged his shoulder a little bit, we’ve got to see how that responds. We don’t know that either at this point, but he had a sore shoulder last night.”
—With all of their cornerbacks again healthy, Jeremy Lane was the odd man out in the rotation, a change for the player who was Seattle’s nickel corner for most of the season. Seattle instead moved Byron Maxwell, the usual starting right cornerback, into the nickel spot in passing situations, bringing Tharold Simon in to play on the outside. That isn’t necessarily how things will go moving forward, Carroll said: “We’ll take a look at the week and see what’s going on. We have flexibility and these guys area a little different, so we’ll how we do that. Too early to tell.”
Carroll was again asked about the final play of the first half, which not only cost them a shot at a field goal but also resulted in an interception that was nearly returned for a touchdown. And as was the case after the game, Carroll said he didn’t regret the decision to run one more play with eight seconds left, just that the play didn’t work.
“It didn’t work out,” Carroll said. “We’ve been practicing those seconds and those opportunities, and we didn’t make the right throw right there. Russ threw the ball down the middle, and we likely wouldn’t have scored—they might have made the tackle. It was a shot to throw the ball at the end zone, and they played so far off that it just didn’t work out right for us. We had planned to still kick the field goal, but we wanted to take one more shot and see what happens, but it didn’t work out.”
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