Pete Carroll talks Seahawks old-school football but won't commit to it

Pete Carroll says one thing but apparently forgets to act on it

Regardless, in 2016 Carroll managed to convince himself that Wilson needed to throw the ball more for the Seahawks to return to glory. Or he allowed Wilson to convince him. However it played out, it was the wrong move. Seattle dropped to 20th in attempts and 25th in yards. Wilson had his second straight 4,000-yard season, and the Seahawks fell in the divisional round again. Seattle ran the ball just 21 times in their loss to the Falcons. The Hawks were 21st and 23rd in rushing attempts and yards in 2017 and fell to 9-7. For only the second time in Pete Carroll's tenure, they missed the playoffs.

Apparently, that was enough to snap Pete out of the spell of his miracle worker quarterback, as the Seahawks led the league in rushing in 2018, and were second in attempts. A healthy Chris Carson went a long way to making that a reality, of course. Wilson's pass attempts dropped from 553 to 427, yet their scoring jumped from 366, 11th in the league, to 428, 6th in the NFL. Funny how that works, huh? Seattle dropped a bit in 2019 to third and fourth in attempts and yards, and that brings us back to 2020, which saw the trend worsen.

Listen, I know your eyes are glazing over. Mine are too, and I wrote this. The thing is, I prefer providing numbers that support my idea, rather than just writing something Twitter-worthy like, "Well, it's true because I said so."

The crazy thing is that even with the chef gone for two seasons, the Hawks still aren't running the ball. They rank 29th in the league in rushing attempts and yardage. This despite having spent two second-round picks in back-to-back years on running backs. Kenneth Walker II was the second RB taken, while Zach Charbonnet was the third in his draft. You would think the coach who says things like this, as quoted by Adam Lewis for Seattle Sports, would use those guys more.

"“If you’ve listened to me over the years, it’s the running game that closes the circle of toughness on your team,” Carroll said. “It’s special teams, it’s defense, and then it’s that running game element. That has not been part of our team the way we would like it to be.”"

- Pete Carroll

Yes, Pete, we have listened to you over the years. So it seems rather odd that you haven't listened to yourself. Where, exactly, is that running game element? Frankly, I'm shocked he hasn't tried to get Jimmy Graham to come back into the league. Seriously though, Arizona has allowed more rushing attempts and rushing yards than any other team in the league. Yes, they're even worse than Seattle. If the Seahawks don't run the ball at least 35 times versus the Cardinals, he probably does need to resign.

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