It isn't as bad as it seems.

[TwistedHusky]

I cannot believe I am the one saying this, but the gloom over this loss is over the top.

Yes, Carroll is old. And likely out of new ideas. And has a habit of hiring coordinators chosen more for their ability to get along well with him than actually produce. His best days have been behind him for some time and after this long, we should know that Wilson isn't going to be able to offset that. Carroll also loves to shoehorn in gameplans that don't match our personnel.

But this was the bottom.

With Carroll, you get a season with highs and lows. For there to be highs there have to be lows. The question is why is it the high and lows with him? Why do we seemingly compete well against teams that should destroy us and then lose to teams we should destroy?

What causes these highs and lows?

Carroll isn't a great tactician, in fact, he is horrible at tactics. He isn't that great a strategist either. What he is very good at is creating teams that feed on emotion. He can get his teams emotionally 'up' for big games and they will run through walls for him. When our teams play with that emotion, they play physical, fast, and are incredibly difficult to compete with.

Stands to reason, that when our team is starved of emotion the opposite might happen. And it seems to.

Our players use that emotion as rocket fuel. When there, we are a buzz saw. When missing, we seem a step behind. The challenge with emotion is you cannot be 'up' 100% of the time. So you trade consistency for the ability to play much better at times, much worse at others. That is pretty much a guaranteed wildcard berth every year.

So this was a low. It isn't the state of the team, just this team was never as good as it seemed during the highs in the first place.

With Carroll, one certainty is going to be knowing you have a wildcard playoff team almost every year*. That isn't terrible, the expectations were just crazily setting our highs as the standard. We were never as good as we looked at our best. And we are not as bad as we look in these lows.



* However, it is not reasonable to expect better than this if you consistently produce this outcome annually.

 

[fenderbender123]

I think the Giants just played a hell of a game. I haven't watched them a lot this year but people who are fans of other teams keep saying "oh yeah, the Giants are a lot better than their record. Their defense is pretty ferocious" whenever I mentioned our loss over the weekend.

But I also do see the same thing that others have pointed out . I'm not seeing a lot of diversity with the play calling. Lots of drop backs and looking to throw deep, despite how well the Giants are at covering it. Where are the designed rollouts, quick throws, etc. Too few and far between it seems.

 

[Grahamhawker]

Some truth there.

I think my biggest issue as a fan is annually allowing myself to get baited in by some of the "highs".

 

[TwistedHusky]

I disagree Fender.

If we had won against the Giants, we would have lost either to the Jets or to Washington.

We were losing one of these 3 in this 'easy' stretch. Guaranteed. That is classic Pete Carroll since he has been here.

This was less the Giants than us. The Giants defense gave up plenty of points to other teams. They are not world-beaters.

This team will find one terrible team to lose to every year. You can bank on it.

Now that we lost this one, we can be sure we beat the Jets and Washington.

 

[NJlargent]

Twisted,

I appreciate the post. The issue I have is the positive emotion doesn’t get us through the divisional round. There isn’t much there to pick us up when Russell isn’t at top level.

 

[pittpnthrs]

Now that we lost this one, we can be sure we beat the Jets and Washington.

I'm not sure about it. I think Washington beats us too.

 

[Jerhawk]

Stop trying to be positive and bring logic here Twisted. I'm still bent after this loss! Heads need to roll!

The Jets just fired Gregg Williams. We should've done the same to Norton awhile ago.
The fact that Pete continues to hold onto these coordinators is frustrating and a reflection that he's stuck in the past.
Its time to clean house and rebuild!

 

[TwistedHusky]

Pitt,

The Washington DL is admittedly very Rams-ish. They should beat us.

But I bet we destroy them.

The Giants game was probably planned as an easy win by a TD or less. We likely put little effort into the offensive gameplan. I doubt we do that vs Washington. It looked like we thought we would squeak out a victory against an overmatched Giants team that was on the road. It showed.

We always look worse after these kinds of losses but even considering that Carroll is an abjectly terrible gameday coach surrounded by bottom tier coordinators, does not change Washington's roster + staff isn't going to be good enough to overcome our roster (even with the staff dragging us down a bit), especially if we get our key OL pieces back.

 

[Sgt. Largent]

It isn't as bad as it seems for me, because this is what I thought we were all along...........at team with glaring holes all over the place, including the coaching staff that is going to live and die on whether Russell plays perfectly to eek out wins.

So here we are, once again knocking on the door of a WC berth hoping to maybe win one playoff game before getting our teeth kicked in by an actual SB contender.

 

[Grahamhawker]

It isn't as bad as it seems for me, because this is what I thought we were all along...........at team with glaring holes all over the place, including the coaching staff that is going to live and die on whether Russell plays perfectly to eek out wins.

So here we are, once again knocking on the door of a WC berth hoping to maybe win one playoff game before getting our teeth kicked in by an actual SB contender.

That's about the size of it.

It was easy to buy in that 5-0 or 6-1 might have meant more than it actually did.

 

[TwistedHusky]

Largent,

We NEVER were a SB contender. You cannot expect a team with bottom tier coordinators to reliably go on a playoff run. It happens (see Carolina in the SB) but for the most part, no.

We had our peak early, people projected that peak as the norm. But you cannot project this team from the Highs, it isn't even close to as good consistently as it is at its best.

This was always a wildcard team. The hope was the 'Let Russ Cook' thing would be a significant enough change that we could break this pattern. But ultimately you are what you are. This staff is built to create wildcard playoff teams.

We were never going to win a divisional playoff team unless we got lucky enough to face an NFC East Div winner.

Not being an elite team does not make you terrible - as some of the reaction almost seems to imply. Nothing is 'broken'. This is the same old Seahawks we have seen for 5 years now. Still a playoff team, just not a great one. Not even close to a SB contender but it never was.

 

[Sgt. Largent]

Largent,

We NEVER were a SB contender. You cannot expect a team with bottom tier coordinators to reliably go on a playoff run. It happens (see Carolina in the SB) but for the most part, no.

We had our peak early, people projected that peak as the norm. But you cannot project this team from the Highs, it isn't even close to as good consistently as it is at its best.

This was always a wildcard team. The hope was the 'Let Russ Cook' thing would be a significant enough change that we could break this pattern. But ultimately you are what you are. This staff is built to create wildcard playoff teams.

We were never going to win a divisional playoff team unless we got lucky enough to face an NFC East Div winner.

Not being an elite team does not make you terrible - as some of the reaction almost seems to imply. Nothing is 'broken'. This is the same old Seahawks we have seen for 5 years now. Still a playoff team, just not a great one. Not even close to a SB contender but it never was.

You're agreeing with me then, because I never thought we were a serious SB contender.

Fans got fooled, many in here with the 5-0 start thinking it meant more than it did............which was Russell and the offense coming out of the gate taking advantage of defenses that had no camp or time to get into sync.

Well, now those defenses are in sync, and we're back to asking the same questions we've been asking for going on 6-7 years now.

- What's wrong with the defense
- Why can't we draft better
- What's wrong with Russell
- Why does Pete continue to make the same mistakes
- Why is the playcalling so inconsistent

Groundhog Day.

 

[fenderbender123]

The Giants defense may have had some bad games this year, but based on my eye test they played at a high level yesterday. That's just one aspect that played into the loss, and they may have struggled had we prepared for them differently. But I'm just a long time fan of the game, not an expert.

 

[gowazzu02]

The Giants defense may have had some bad games this year, but based on my eye test they played at a high level yesterday. That's just one aspect that played into the loss, and they may have struggled had we prepared for them differently. But I'm just a long time fan of the game, not an expert.

Pretty easy to look good when the opposite team abandons the run that was getting 5 yards a pop. And the opposing QB refuses to throw the ball to wide open, receivers.

 

[AgentDib]

In my view, losing games that you are favored to win is an NFL thing rather than specifically a Pete Carroll thing. It was statistically unlikely that we would be able to win four games in a row despite the opponents, largely because NFL parity leads to a much smaller difference between the best and the worst teams than in many other sports.

Yes, the Hawks losing to the Giants was an upset, but there are tons of upsets in the NFL every single week. Just yesterday, the Chargers were favorites against the Patriots and yet lost by 45 points. And it's not like only teams are vulnerable to this - the Patriots were upset by the Texans, the Saints and Chiefs were both upset by the Raiders, and the Dolphins took out the 49ers, Rams and Cardinals for us.

I haven't seen anything over the years to suggest that we are more (or less) vulnerable to getting upset than the average NFL team. Most fanbases of winning teams excuse away parity to themselves by arguing they just play down to the level of their competition, but the reality is that NFL games are highly uncertain.

 

[ducks41468]

It's not as bad as it seems because it was never as good as it seemed. We're an average team with a weak schedule playing exactly like an average team with a weak schedule. Look at the Raiders, no one thinks they're SB contenders even though they beat the Chiefs, Bucs, and Saints.

 

[ZagHawk]

With Carroll, one certainty is going to be knowing you have a wildcard playoff team almost every year*. That isn't terrible, the expectations were just crazily setting our highs as the standard. We were never as good as we looked at our best. And we are not as bad as we look in these lows.



* However, it is not reasonable to expect better than this if you consistently produce this outcome annually.

This is where Im struggling as a fan. a GOOD team is entertaining but a GREAT team is one that contends. Pete will be able to create a GOOD team year after year, but I think his ability to have a GREAT team is done. We gotta ask ourselves is having a BAD team potentially worth having a GREAT team. Because I'm really starting to feel like the Hawks are a better version of the Mariners who year after year are close to getting into the playoffs but not good enough and every season end people say "they're right there, it could be worse". The Hawks being a team that's in the playoffs year after year, but getting bounced in the second round and people saying "they're right there, it could be worse", but the next season plays out the same.

 

[AgentDib]

And the opposing QB refuses to throw the ball to wide open, receivers.

Wilson definitely had a bad game, but the question is how you should interpret that as a fan.

You could take the deterministic viewpoint in that what you saw happened because it was fated to happen. Russ was forced to play poorly because of X, Y, and Z, and if those factors happen in the next game then he is going to play poorly in that one too. He cannot figure out cover 2 defenses and unless we change something dramatically in our offensive scheme or put him through some kind of quick cover 2 boot camp then the days of him excelling are behind us due to his lower mobility these days. We should still be able to beat team A but will lose to team B based on what we saw yesterday.

Alternatively, a probabilistic view acknowledges that what we saw was just one possible version of what could happen. Humans are not machines, and you cannot distill individual performance variances into a set of equations based on variables. Rather than having an off-day, Russ could have been closer to average in performance and the game would have looked easy if he made 4-5 better decisions. Perhaps the overall distribution of Russ's performances has shifted downwards recently due to being a new father and not feeling great, but he is still capable of playing much better than he showed yesterday. We could beat both team A and B or lose to both depending on what kind of outcomes we get, but the potential is still there to finish 8-8 or 12-4.

 

[ducks41468]

We're not even entertaining. Outside of the early stretch where we had to be entertaining to keep up with the defense, we've gone back to the same painful, sleep-inducing football that we've been playing for years. Every game is a 22-16 utter slogfest and even our wins are thoroughly unsatisfying

 

[LTH]

I cannot believe I am the one saying this, but the gloom over this loss is over the top.

Yes, Carroll is old. And likely out of new ideas. And has a habit of hiring coordinators chosen more for their ability to get along well with him than actually produce. His best days have been behind him for some time and after this long, we should know that Wilson isn't going to be able to offset that. Carroll also loves to shoehorn in gameplans that don't match our personnel.

But this was the bottom.

With Carroll, you get a season with highs and lows. For there to be highs there have to be lows. The question is why is it the high and lows with him? Why do we seemingly compete well against teams that should destroy us and then lose to teams we should destroy?

What causes these highs and lows?

Carroll isn't a great tactician, in fact, he is horrible at tactics. He isn't that great a strategist either. What he is very good at is creating teams that feed on emotion. He can get his teams emotionally 'up' for big games and they will run through walls for him. When our teams play with that emotion, they play physical, fast, and are incredibly difficult to compete with.

Stands to reason, that when our team is starved of emotion the opposite might happen. And it seems to.

Our players use that emotion as rocket fuel. When there, we are a buzz saw. When missing, we seem a step behind. The challenge with emotion is you cannot be 'up' 100% of the time. So you trade consistency for the ability to play much better at times, much worse at others. That is pretty much a guaranteed wildcard berth every year.

So this was a low. It isn't the state of the team, just this team was never as good as it seemed during the highs in the first place.

With Carroll, one certainty is going to be knowing you have a wildcard playoff team almost every year*. That isn't terrible, the expectations were just crazily setting our highs as the standard. We were never as good as we looked at our best. And we are not as bad as we look in these lows.



* However, it is not reasonable to expect better than this if you consistently produce this outcome annually.

My old friend Twisted Husky... LOL dude The whole right side of the O line is hurt... the giants took advantage of that... the Hawks were down to the 3rd string right tackle... Wilson was running for his life most of the game... and then when he did have time the receivers were covered...

This isn't unfixable at all... better to happen now than figure this out after playing the Rams and Niners... I think the Giants are a good football team that is very well coached and their game plan was spot on... they are leaders in their division which happen to have very good defensive teams as in the Giants and Eagles...

they need to get the running backs healthy and get back to smash mouth football

your right it's not the end of the world but then again the hawks had a setback it happens... next week they will make some adjustments and move forward...

The NFL has parity and those that think the giants are a bad team just found out otherwise myself included... I thought the Hawks were going to roll... the giants have a really good D and they proved that last night just got to give them credit , the hawks need to learn and move on..


LTH