The Seattle Seahawks have always been a bit of an odd team under head coach Pete Carroll, right? Even in the years the team was great - the mid-2010s - the team still had games where they would snatch victory from the jaws of death. Sure, Seattle blew out several teams, but sometimes they just played down to their competition.
But as the seasons since 2010 have passed and Seattle has remained a pretty decent team for the most part, forgiving Carroll for some of his coaching sins - bad timeouts, poor defensive trends that have not changed - has been easy to do. 12s could assume Seattle would win the majority of its games and the world would be right.
But slowly, Seattle began to drift away from being a championship contender and then the team beached in 2021 at 7-10. 2022 provided a band-aid as the Seahawks were far better than many expected. But 2023 has been closer to 2021 and maybe simply who the Seahawks are under Pete Carroll at this point. More on that in a minute.
DK Metcalf is truly Seattle's WR1 for better or worse
I recently wrote about the Seahawks maybe needing to move on from Tyler Lockett after 2023 because Lockett is an aging receiver whose cap hit explodes in 2024. A lot of 12s were upset by my saying that and I understand that. Lockett is a great person and has been a very good receiver for Seattle. I do not want to see him go, either, but Seattle would save $7 million next year by removing Lockett's contract.
Lockett will be 32 years old early in 2024 and in 2023 he is tied for his career-low in yards per catch (10.5), is on pace to have his fewest touchdown catches since 2017, has his lowest catch rate since 2017 (67.8 percent), and is averaging the fewest yards per target (7.1) of his career. And in many ways, DK Metcalf has overtaken him as the clear WR1 on Seattle's team (while Jaxon Smith-Njigba could replace Lockett's production).
Metcalf, while very inconsistent, trails Lockett in receptions this year (59 to 49), but Metcalf has nearly 200 more receiving yards (812 to 622) than Lockett, more touchdowns (6 to 4), and more yards per target (9.2 to 7.1). Metcalf does a lot more with what he gets than Lockett does. Metcalf also is having his best season in yards per catch (16.6).
Does DK Metcalf need to learn to use his size even more to get open? Yes. But Metcalf is going to be a Seahawk much longer than Lockett will and 12s just need to hope Metcalf gets even better.
Has Pete Carroll lost control of his Seattle Seahawks?
Pete Carroll has always been a coach who lets his players be themselves. It's one of the pillars of his coaching success, he believes. And who is to argue really? The Seahawks have the sixth-most wins in the league since Carroll and general manager John Schneider came to Seattle to run the on-field product of Seahawks football. But time changes, of course, and a great coach has to adjust with that.
This season we have seen players act slightly differently, both toward the media and toward the team itself. Jamal Adams, for instance, went after a Jets reporter on social media and Adams responded by saying something negative about the reporter's wife and posting a photo of her.
Things like that happen in sports, of course, but Adams and Carroll have both said they have spoken about the situation and Adams seems no different in his attitude about the event. Is that Adams' way of disrespecting Carroll by seemingly dismissing any advice or direction about what Carroll may have said?
Earlier in the season, receiver DK Metcalf completely dismissed Carroll's talk about how Metcalf needed to stop accumulating 15-yard penalties. Carroll wrote the team's penalties on a whiteboard and showed what kind Metcalf was getting. When asked by a reporter, Metcalf wiped away any praise for Carroll and said the board was just a board to him.
I like Carroll and he has led the Seahawks to a ton of wins. But any coach who might be losing control of his team is going to have issues. Plus, many times to fix the issue, the head coach needs to lose his job.
Week 14 picks!
The Seahawks have lost to the San Francisco 49ers four straight times and none of those games have been close. Seattle miraculously led the 49ers at halftime in the 2022 Wild Card playoff game before losing 41-23. The 21-13 49ers win last December never felt that close and the 49ers led 21-6 before a late Seahawks touchdown.
San Francisco, when healthy, looks like the best team in the NFL and it doesn't even appear close. The 49ers lost three straight games earlier this season but they were without several key players. They are healthy entering Week 14 so does Seattle truly have a chance to beat the 49ers? The hope is the old adage that on any given Sunday any NFL team can beat another.
But the likelihood of Seattle winning? That is not very high. I have no seen any national media outlet pick the Seahawks to beat San Francisco. We are only two weeks from the 49ers slamming the Seahawks 31-13. I see this game as the 49ers getting off to a fast start offensively and putting some distance between them and the Seahawks until Seattle gets a late score or two that makes the score look closer than the game truly was. The 49ers win 35 to 24. Here is what some national pundits think.
Pete Prisco, CBS Sports: 49ers 35 Seattle 23
Ali Bhanpuri, NFL.com: 49ers 33 Seattle 21
Tom Blair, NFL.com: 49ers 27 Seattle 14
Brooke Cersosimo, NFL.com: 49ers 34 Seattle 20
Gennaro Filice, NFL.com: 49ers 31 Seattle 17
Dan Parr, NFL.com: 49ers 29 Seattle 18
Everyone at ESPN picks the 49ers
Everyone at The Athletic picks the 49ers