Getty Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll
The Seattle Seahawks’ Week 14 28-16 loss to the San Francisco 49ers came down to big plays. Backup quarterback Drew Lock had a few, while Brock Purdy and the 49ers offense had more.
On Monday, December 11, after the team’s fourth consecutive loss, head coach Pete Carroll went on his radio show and did something he rarely does: Call out players like Jamal Adams and Riq Woolen by name.
Pete Carroll Called Out Jamal Adams & Riq Woolen
Big plays doomed the Seahawks in Week 14 against the 49ers.
Christian McCaffrey ripped off a 72-yard run on the first offensive play of the game, Deebo Samuel caught and ran for a 54-yard touchdown on 3rd down, and George Kittle’s 44-yard touchdown at the start of the fourth quarter pushed the game from a five-point affair to what would become the final score.
On his weekly appearance on The Pete Carroll Show with Mike Salk and Brock Huard (the latter of whom was out sick Monday) on Seattle Sports radio, the head coach wasn’t shy about calling out the Seahawks defenders responsible for these game-changing plays.
“When the moment came for those opportunities that we practiced, we didn’t hit it seriously enough to make the impression, ‘I gotta make this play.’ It’s Deebo coming across on a deep cross right to Jamal [Adams],” Carroll explained. “That’s something we’ve seen and we work on. It never should have happened, particularly on 3rd-and-13 or 3rd-and-11, whatever it was.”
“The other one is on the right side when Kittle gets behind us on that. We saw that happen last year, and we corrected all of that through our training,” Carroll said. “And [Riq Woolen] didn’t do it right. He got caught on the play fake. He’s not supposed to be part of the play fake.”
Finally, Carroll summed up by saying that these two defensive backs in particular have to do a better job overall.
“We gotta practice cleaner, better. For Jamal, we gotta make sure he’s getting his reps in practice that he can execute and get the timing. Riq’s gotta make his play. That’s his one. It’s a discipline play,” Carroll told Salk before also admitting there will be some changes moving forward, although he declined to specify what those changes would be.
Seahawks Are in the Worst Stretch of the Carroll Era
As infrequently as Pete Carroll calls out his players in the media, there is something he does even less often: Lose four games in a row. In fact, it’s never happened during his 14 seasons as head coach in Seattle.
The last time it happened to Carroll at all was in 2001, the first season he took over the USC Trojans football program. And as an NFL coach, Carroll hasn’t had four straight L’s since he lost his final five games as head coach of the New York Jets in 1994.
When Salk asked Carroll what his “level of frustration” is, the coach responded, “I’m — it’s up. I’m there.”
Unfortunately for Carroll and his Seahawks, the team will be favored to equal Carroll’s previous high mark of futility when they take on the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 15. The Eagles opened as -3.5 favorites for their Monday Night Football tilt with the Seahawks on Dec. 18, per FanDuel.
However, the Eagles are struggling as well, dropping their last two games and barely avoiding a three-game skid with a Week 12 overtime comeback win over the Buffalo Bills.
One solace Seahawks fans can take is that Heavy Sports’ projections, powered by Quarter 4, have Seattle as a slightly smaller -3-point underdog, and gives them a 41% chance of winning the game outright.