Seattle Seahawks head coach held his weekly press conference with the media on Tuesday and here are some takeaways from that conversation.
Overall impression regarding loss to Broncos.
We have to finish better and that means playing right long enough to win the game. We let them run the football a little bit at us, we didn’t convert on third down on the offensive side, and it was enough to let those guys get a heck of a good win for them. They played great, did a lot of good stuff; a tough team in a challenging setting, as we know. What we look at is where do we need to go to make sure we get back on track so we can finish right and play better so that we can get out ahead. We gave up a couple big plays in this game on defense that were just terrible for us for touchdowns that really were just mistakes. That’s easily cleaned up if we can avoid that, if we do right and have a good week and play our guys well and all that. Really missed that opportunity (to win in Denver) and it would’ve been a great win to get to start this thing off.”
(On Doug Baldwin’s status)
“He’s really going to go a few days at a time here. Let’s see what happens. We’ll wait and see. We don’t know yet. It could be a couple weeks. It could be a couple weeks and we’ll find out. He’s as tough as you get and we’ll need to wait. He’s getting his science back and we’ll find out in the next couple of days what that means.”
On if that’s a better outcome than expected for Doug Baldwin)
“Yeah, he’ll be able to get back from this. He’ll come back from it. It just depends – we’ve just got to see it through. It’s really early in the year. We’ve got to take care of him and look after him first and foremost, and then we’ll only do what he’s capable of doing, with the OK from the doctors too.”
On Russell Wilson’s performance)
“We missed some chances. There were a couple – he tried to escape to make something happen on a couple downs there that fell right into sacks, easy sacks for them. It wasn’t because of the pass protection necessarily, it was because he moved and flushed off the routes that got covered up. (Germain) Ifedi had his guy roaring way around and Russ went right into him. That happens. We had some different reasons why we got pressured and it kind of spread around the board.
We’ve been pass protecting so much better than that and I think we’ll make a good turnaround on that, but in this game, it happened to be that Russ fell into a couple, missed a couple shots, missed a couple third down thoughts that we had that could’ve been better. He said it too. He could’ve played better. He did a lot of good things, too, and gave us a chance to win the football game. We’re right there at the end of the game and it’s hard to turn away – he drops a snap on the two-minute drive there at the end and so that’s frustrating for him and all of us and all that. He did some good things, really good things, and then he also had some (subpar) plays like he always will. In particular, against those guys rushing the passer as they did, they were able to get us a couple times that normally, we would think they wouldn’t.”
(On the performances of Bradley McDougald and Earl Thomas)
“They did really well. Really, we missed the other one, too. Right off the bat, Earl makes a terrific break on the ball, knocks the ball up and B-Mac had the ball in his hands. He could’ve had a third (interception) on that day. The guys did a really nice job. They made the plays they needed to for the most part and all that. I wish both those guys would’ve got the big play that went for the touchdown. We should’ve got them on the ground on that. You hope your safeties get that done after we broke down earlier, but they played good football. I made the comment to the team, I thought they really came through.”
(On the offensive line’s performance)
“We’re never going to say they did well when there’s six sacks on the board, you know? But they weren’t responsible for all that, and I understand that on the broadcast, all they could do was talk about (Germain) Ifedi. Germain played okay in this game. I don’t know what – it looked like they went in thinking that he wasn’t going to play very well, but he did a nice job on a lot of stuff. We weren’t quite as clean as we need to be on a couple pick-ups. You saw them take advantage on a couple stunts that we should really block up. We’ve been blocking up all camp and we missed it. They can play better too. I think our protection is better than it’s been. Six sacks doesn’t show you that, but the four-man rushes that they did, we did very well on and we’ll be able to clean some things up.”
(On the challenge of facing one of the league’s best pass rushers in Khalil Mack)
“We just faced one of them, too. They’re pretty good. I mean, he couldn’t have had more impact in the amount of plays he played the other night and he’s a phenomenal player so he causes all the problems you can imagine. It’s kind of similar emphasis for us, coming from kind of the same spot over there. We’ll see if we can take care of him.”
(On the performance of the secondary)
“No, I thought both corners played well. Tre (Flowers) got his first chance to start in a real game and he came through and played good football. They caught a ball on him on a great play, a great throw and catch. Shaq (Shaquill Griffin) played solid and both the safeties were very active so that was a real positive for us in the game. I thought those guys did a nice job. We need to help them out a little bit underneath. We had some problems in underneath stuff, but that was a strong performance.
Really, I guess the guy you’re looking at, since all the other guys are the starters from the end of last year, was to see how Tre did and he held up and was tough and consistent. Felt he was very poised about handling it. He was very similar to how – you’ve heard me talk about Shaq a year ago in handling his first opportunities to start. He seemed very comfortable with it and was ready for the action and responded well during the game. It was clear and could communicate with him and all those good things that we’re looking for. He competed really well and it’s a good sign.”
(On the defensive line and pass rush)
“We didn’t rush the passer very well. We didn’t come off – they had a lot of play (action) passes in the game that we got stuck on the line of scrimmage. I know Clint Hurtt was talking to the fellas about it, that we have to make that transition from the run game to the passing game. Whenever we give up as many yards as we did by the end of the game on the ground, it’s not good enough for us. We don’t expect that to happen. We gave up fifty yards or something in the fourth quarter, or whatever it was. That didn’t help us finish the game. It was one of the issues of the game.”
(On the plan for using Shaquem Griffin and Austin Calitro)
“Going into the game, just because of the setting and all that, the plan was to play (Shaquem Griffin more) but (Austin Calitro) played more than we probably had planned and Austin did pretty well. Griff, he had some problems on some stuff. There were some things that happened to him that wasn’t quite as clean as we would like. Got fooled on a couple things, but he played hard and played tough and all of that.
It’s just his first game trying to figure it out and even through preseason, he had a lot of reps but stuff happened to him for the first time in this game that hadn’t happened before and didn’t always see it the way he needed to. It’s a difficult transition that he’s making. It’s a lot to do in a short amount of time and they had a nice offense. They did some nice stuff and he wasn’t quite where he wanted to be at times. We’ll just keep going. We were kind of in the situation. We’ll find out during the week how the guys play and how they do and how practice goes, and we’ll see what we’re going to do about play time.”
(On the performance from the run game) “Chris (Carson), I thought, looked really good. He was really aggressive and did what could with the plays he had. Rashaad (Penny) looked a little rusty to me and when I visited with him about it – he really only had one good week of practice coming back (from his injury) and it wasn’t enough.
He needs more work and he wasn’t as responsive as he’s been earlier on, before he had to sit out for a while, so he’s going to work real hard to make sure that he’s ready to go and we’ll work him in. We love the chance of getting him in there. We’re going to keep looking for it, but Chris really took the lead in the position after that game and Rashaad’s going to – right now, they’re going to alternate and we’re going to keep working those guys and see how they do, but Rashaad needs to get back really primed up like he was about a month ago.”
(On 14 rushes in 55 offensive plays)
“Not enough. Well, we were behind a lot in the game, but that’s not the reason. The reason was we didn’t convert on third down. It’s just football. Two of twelve (on third down) and that leaves you where you don’t get your next series, you don’t convert and we really missed. There was four 3rd-and-5 or less (plays) that, every one of them should’ve been conversions and that changes the complexion of everything about the game and the play-calling and all that.
After all of the stuff we just talked about, and I know I went through the same thing with the club, we’re heading into the fourth quarter ready to go take a game over in a very difficult situation, and there’s something about that that we need to understand, that we had a chance to hang in that game because of the plays that were made and all that. There’s so much good room to clear things up and to get better and all that. We come out of it with an understanding of that. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get that done.”
