It was a systematic fail. Russell Wilson played some of his worst ball of the season for three and a half quarters, Bevell reverted to the "throw it and pray" offense, our defense was garbage the whole second half, and the refs were doing a whole lotta home cookin'.
If I had to just chose one scapegoat, it would have to be Bevell. I believe that Bevell single handedly lost us the game with his incompetence. The first drive showed a lot of promise. We were really pressing their defense with the short, and intermediate routes. We had to settle with a punt, but we didn't come out looking like a half dead, dollar special hooker. Good planning, we found an approach that was working. What we proceeded to do after that good first drive is completely deviate from what was working for our offense, and Wilson.
We started running the lords prayer offense. No outlet receivers, just a whole lot of F----it I'm going deep. A bunch of go routes, and deep, inside posts. The announcers sounded confused, perplexed even. The tone of their voices said "are you kidding me?". They spent a good portion of the game questioning our offense strategy, I think at one point one of them said "what are Seahawks doing?" He then made mention of the plays that had no outlet routes, no short, or intermediate routes called. The playcalls were reminiscent of myself playing madden for the first time on easy mode, except for the fact this is the NFL, against the best secondary, and defense in the NFL. Against a secondary that thrives on big plays, and a defensive line that is leading the NFL in sacks and pressures by a good margin.
What hubris convinces Bevell that these kind of plays will fool, or even have a chance in hell at succeeding against the Jaguars is beyond me. The act of running these kind of plays against this type of defense, we really set our Quarterback up for failure. Whenever we got something going, Bevell would go back to these low percentage plays. It is like an amateur trying to box a pro. The amateur will just wildly throw out haymakers, praying, hoping that the pro boxer will get hit. Unfortunately, said pro boxer dodges punches for a living, and the chances of the amateur hitting the boxer with these wild haymakers is nill. Bevell must've thought that he was close to god this week, because these plays he decided to call were prayers. Throw it up, and pray something bad doesn't happen. We didn't even attempt to disguise what we planned on doing to these guys. The result? They gamed our offense, again and again.
We adjusted in the third Quarter. Mike Davis was breaking off for some huge runs. Bevell, being the good Mormon that he is decides that it is time for his Sunday prayer again. Instead of playing off the play action, and capitalizing on our new found run game, we run the same old, flaming pile of crap hail maryesc play again.
Whenever we got something going, we didn't even force their defense to adjust. Bevell did that job for them, he would go back to the same old, crappy throw it up and pray play. Our offensive coordinator is the Blair Walsh of the offensive coordinator world. He will get something good going one week, then find away to outsmart himself the next. We are never going to sustain any kind of sustained success on offense with him around. The success we do have is largely predicated on our Quarterbacks ability to thrive in chaos, and improvise. As a result we are hindering Russ's progression as a passer, and handicapping our offense for three good quarters. We never get Russ into a rhythm, and when we do happen to do that he looks like a golden god. The 14 touchdowns in the fourth Quarter this year says everything you need to know. Roughly half of our Quarterbacks touchdowns come in the fourth quarter. That is a troubling trend, it means for the other three quarters our offense wasn't doing jack you know what.
We need change, and I don't think we are ever going to get it, at least not under Carroll. We will instead waste our franchise Quarterbacks potential, and lament about what may have been had Russ not been coached by an idiot.