The "leverage" injuries to Sweezy and Fluker are a little concerning in how they reflect on Pocic/OG depth. There's still room for Pocic to have a big step up in his second full off-season but he clearly needs it.
Agree with Ivotuk that it was a team loss. I don't see it as a matter of blame but rather one of philosophy: offenses should play increasingly more conservatively as their defense plays increasingly better. When our defense gives up two TDs in the fourth quarter then in hindsight we all wish the game plan had been more aggressive, but one of the core problems remains that the defense gave up more points than Carroll thought we needed to win.
Entering the season I'm sure most of us were curious to see how much we would open things up given a defense that looked like it was going to be terrible. Instead Pete went the other way and Houdini'd the defense into being pretty good. If he can make a similar improvement to the defense this off-season then he can be as conservative as he wants next year. If he can't, then that's where a good portion of the discussion should center as good defense is fundamental to his strategy.
Where I differ from most(everybody?) on here is I think it's OK to lose games with an overly conservative game plan sometimes. Pete is an excellent defensive coach and believing in his defense is important to how they play. Sometimes opposing teams play well, sometimes we are hampered by key injuries or penalties, sometimes otherwise reliable players just make poor plays, and there is always a large factor of randomness in NFL games due to the parity between teams.
What we witnessed on Saturday was a bad outcome in which our defense gave up three TDs on four red zone trips while our offense converted just two third downs. If we had a rematch tomorrow there's no reason to think either of those factors would go as poorly a second time in a row. Not having that option, the best we can do is look at the broadest possible picture. In that regard I'm generally happy with how the season went given our personnel and how much dead money we entered the season with.
