Pete Carroll has his usual Monday press conference later this afternoon, but he already did his morning show on 710 ESPN Seattle, so let’s go over a bit of what he had to say.
First off, the injury news is better on Byron Maxwell than what was feared Sunday. Carroll had thought Maxwell might have a high ankle sprain—often times a 4-to-6 week injury—but on Monday he said the report was better.
“It is not a high ankle sprain we found out, he’s got a calf strain, which is better that the sprain,” Carroll said. “We’ll see what happens with that.”
If Maxwell misses any time, however, it will put pressure on a thin secondary. Jeremy Lane is still on short-term injured reserve, and can’t return to game action until Seattle’s Week 10 game against the New York Giants. The good news is that Tharold Simon, who is recovering from knee surgery, is “a week or so away” according to Carroll. Carroll said Lane is on a similar timeline, and he is eligible to return to practice next week, but again, game action is still a ways off.
On safety Kam Chancellor, who didn’t practice because of a hip injury, but did play in the game, Carroll said, “He’s OK. He made it through the game. He couldn’t practice during the week, he had a hip that bothered him, but he played. I don’t think he was at his best, but he made a valiant effort to get out there and stay out there. He looked like he had his body under him all game long, but he could surely be a lot better. It was great he stuck it out and played.”
As for what Carroll had to say about the game itself, here are a few highlights:
On Dallas’ defense shutting the Seahawks down: “Defensively they played their best game they’ve played maybe in a couple of years, I would bet. They were on everything.”
On DeMarco Murray rushing for 115 yards: “We didn’t tackle DeMarco as well as I thought we would. I thought we’d tackle him better; we’d worked really hard at it. He was able to shake us some.”
On the offense’s struggles: “There were just a number of errors kind of sprinkled around. There were enough of them that we were not sharp. We have to get cleaner in a lot of areas, top to bottom. I know (offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell) feels like he needs to do better and I feel like I need to do better.”
On Dallas converting 3rd-and-20 on the go-ahead drive: “We worked really hard on Tony (Romo) spinning out. There was the classic play a week ago (against Houston) with J.J. Watt. The exact same thing happened again. We were zeroed in on it, Bruce had a great rush going, and sure enough, Tony was better than we were at that moment. He got free and made the play that saved the game. With all that happened, it’s 3rd-and-20 with 4:55 left, we totally have them, and they make a throw and catch that’s just to die for.”
On the play calling and Marshawn Lynch not getting enough carries: “We feel the same way. We always will, because we want to run the football. The mix we went with early on, that’s the way we tried to get the game rolling, and we couldn’t get the perimeter stuff going to shake it up so we could run it up the middle like we wanted to. We were ineffective there, and then—and I don’t mean to sound like a broken record—but when you come back and you don’t convert on third down, then you don’t get your shots (to run the ball)… We’re always dedicated to running the football. Sometimes it feels like, ‘gosh, you weren’t even trying,’ well it just didn’t work out this time, and unfortunately that’s how this game went.”
On not capitalizing on chances against one-on-one coverage: “They did play a lot of man coverage, and we had some shots at it. We had some stuff we were trying to get down field, and they defended some good balls. It looked a little bit like that Cardinals game, it was similar, where were had our plays and they made some fantastic defensive plays.”
On the play of the offensive line: “Well, they played solid. They did OK. There were a couple of times they got beat on pass rushes. I thought Steve Schilling did a nice job for his first time. We had some miscues prior to the snap, those were problems, but we kind of thought that could happen in the first game, but he played hard and worked at it… Russell could help us in protections a couple of times, he didn’t get it done, couldn’t see what he needed to see.”
On getting better: “I can show film and show every position group needs to do things better and more clean. As long as we shoulder that, then we’ll take this challenge to get better and we’ll make some forward steps here.”
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