Seahawks Pete Carroll On LA Rams, “ They Look Like A Really Good Team.”

Seattle Seahawks head  coach Pete Carroll spoke with local media via Zoom Wednesday and  assessed that the team has a difficult task ahead of them. The 6-2 Seahawks will travel to  California and face the  5-3  LA Rams at the newly built SoFI Stadium.

DEFENSIVE INJURIES STILL A CONCERN

The Rams are coming off a bye week after a 28 17 loss to the Miami Dolphins.  A win against the Seahawks would put the Rams back in the race for the Division title. The are coming off a perplexing 44-34 loss to the Buffalo Bills. The Seahawk defense sacked Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen seven times  but gave up  386 passing  yards. The Seahawks secondary was decimated with injuries. The injuries continue to be a major concern going into Sundays game against the Rams.

Q. And second thing, do you have any clarity on Shaquill Griffin’s situation at this point, and how is Quentin’s knee doing?

PETE CARROLL: Yeah, the return for Shaquill now is about his hamstring and getting it right. He’s running some. We’ll see how he progresses through week. If he has a chance to get back, we won’t know until the end.

Quentin’s knee has bothered him for some time and last weekend for sure, so we have to you attend to that.

A COMPLEX OFFENSE TO PLAY AGAINST

Q. You mentioned how innovative Sean McVay is on offense. They’ve been notorious for running a lot of different plays and concepts out of a core number of formations and personnel groupings. Have you seen anything different from them this year in terms of how they’re handling their run game and pass concepts?

PETE CARROLL: They’ve added some stuff to it. Yeah, they have continued to grow, but staying with the same philosophy, theme of how they’ve tried to do things in the past. They’re on to a really good concept about the formations that they use and how they bunch people up and all that. He’s just been really good about continuing to progress.

PETE CARROLL ON AARON DONALD LEADING A TOP NOTCH DEFENSE

Q. With Donald, what’s it like game planning for a guy like that?

PETE CARROLL: Well, I have so much respect for his play and what he does. I like the challenge of it. I like the thought where are looking at him and trying to figure out who has come up with some ways to handle him, slow him down, trying to create ways to make it easier for our guys to find him in the alignments and things like that where we can handle him protection-wise.

Q. Every time you play the Rams we talk about Aaron Donald. In what ways has he gotten even better over the years?

PETE CARROLL: He’s just doing — just to keep coming back and being great again is a great accomplishment. He continues to really draw all the attention and make the plays. I think he’s got to like 40 times he’s affected the quarterback by himself, nine sacks, and there is a lot of times when he’s close as well.

So he’s just a dominant football player, as good as you can get. As good at his position as anybody has ever been. You know, so it’s a real challenge to go against him and it’s good for us. We need the work, the challenge. It’s hugely important for us to be able to handle him and not let him be a factor, and that’s what we’re going to try and get done.

Q. Going back to the Rams defense, what is making them so — their ability to execute? Is it continuity which we’ve been talking about? Scheme? Players? Communication? All of that?

PETE CARROLL: Yeah. So there is a number of things. They look like they been pretty darn healthy. It’s been the same group quite a bit. They have the best player in the world on their defense right in the middle of the defense and he makes problems for everybody. They’re utilizing him really well, much like in the past.

Pretty obvious how you should utilize him, and coach figured that out. They’re doing a nice job of keeping everybody in front of him. It’s made for a really nice run for the first half.

They’re new, too. Everybody is trying to figure them out and the new coach and how he’s doing his stuff. We’ll see as we grow with it and learn from the preparation in this game itself, that we’ll know better what to expect from them. So you get an advantage with the new group right off the bat. See if we can do something with it

RUNNING BACK UPDATE

A solid running game would give the Seahawks a second weapon against the Rams defense. Like the defensive backfield the Seahawks running back unit continue to be plagued by injuries.