The Seattle Seahawks were manhandled Thursday night in front of the 12th Man and a national audience when they fell 27-11 to the Chicago Bears. Mistakes were made on both sides of the ball.
“Man, there just seems to be so many lessons for us right here,” caoch Pete Carroll said after the loss. “We have a big list. And there’s some really obvious things, just trying to win a football game, the penalties and the special teams, the gimmes, the 100 yards in returns, something like that, setting up scores and all. It’s really hard to win when you play like that. It’s hard enough anyway.
“So there’s big lessons.”
So what exactly is a head coach to do with only one preseason game left on the books? Of course Carroll has a plan and he’s not blaming the mistakes just on the short week.
“I have to really zero in on the guys that are having the problems, like Charles (Cross) had problems on the line of scrimmage in this game, four penalties on procedure penalties and stuff that you can obviously clean up, little different situations,” Carroll explained. “But you have to get that out of your football. You can’t play football like that. It’s bad. And so we’ll learn a lot here. I’m not going to make any bellyaching about turning it around for Thursday night. We have to do that during the season. This is what you have to do, and we have to do it better than we did, regardless of what the travel was or whatever. That’s no excuse. You have to get it done and both teams have to play fast.
“We’ll learn from this.”
Carroll and his coaching staff’s last preseason teachable moment in a game setting comes next Friday against the Cowboys. The Seahawks return to the practice field on Sunday to start preparations.
