4 winners and losers (hint, mostly losers) from Seattle Seahawks Week 12 loss

The Seattle Seahawks are now 6-5 with three extremely tough games in a row ahead of them. On Thanksgiving Day, Seattle was destroyed by the San Francisco 49ers in a game that never got closer than 11 points early in the second quarter. San Francisco was the better team, of course, but Seattle looked worse than they did in 2022.

There appear to be no easy fixes for the Seahawks. Most of the post-game comments focused on people doing their jobs and working harder. But if a team doesn't have the right game plan ahead of a game, what difference does working harder make?

Plus, why would a team need to work harder? Shouldn't they already be maximizing their effort? The team needs better preparation ahead of games and then needs to execute the plan. But here are some winners and losers from Week 12.

Loser No. 1 - Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll

We have always heard a lot of the same kinds of things each week from Pete Carroll bundled with a good amount of positivity. And to be fair, most coaches are not going to do interviews where they break down specifically the plays that did not work and Carroll isn't going to throw any player under the proverbial bus. But honestly what we hear from Carroll doesn't matter, but what his team hears in the days leading up to a game does.

Carroll, like most NFL head coaches, works with his offensive and defensive coordinators to build a game plan for the upcoming game. Then the coordinators put the plan into action during practices and hopefully by game time the team has rehearsed what they are going to do so much that there is not much thinking during the game, but simply aggressiveness and reaction.

But the game plans that Carroll and OC Shane Waldron and DC Clint Hurtt have come up with against most of the good teams they have faced in 2023 has not worked at all. Seattle got blown out against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 9 and then slammed by the 49ers in Week 12. Seattle did somehow beat the Detroit Lions in Week 2 and also defeated a Cleveland Browns team in Week 8 that did not have a good quarterback at the helm.

But expecting Seattle to even come close to beating the Dallas Cowboys, 49ers, and Philadelphia Eagles in the next three weeks seems foolish. The Seahawks simply won't be prepared to beat those teams.