The Seattle Seahawks’ offseason officially began on Sunday, and although it is still early, it is already one of the most significant periods of transition for the team in its existence. That is, of course, related to the fact that the team announced on Wednesday that head coach Pete Carroll will not be leading the team moving forward after a 9-8 season that concluded with the team missing out on the postseason for the second time in three years.
The move was met with predictable reactions: some felt it should never have been made, while others said it was done years too late, since the Seahawks haven’t won a postseason game since the conclusion of the Obama administration. Despite consistently having winning records during the regular season and having won two straight after trading for franchise quarterback Russell Wilson, the Hawks have failed to qualify for the postseason.
After considering all of that, the main question is still why ownership would decide to move on, and fans and observers have not been short of answers. Naturally, Carroll pointed out that the decision was taken by “not football people” and said he had the answers to the football problems that caused the team’s on-field problems in 2023 and previous seasons. But as many others pointed out, Carroll had the answers to the problems on the field; it was his responsibility to put them into practice, and season after season, he was unable to do so.
To put it simply, Carroll’s primary responsibility was to win, which, in contrast to the high standards set early in his tenure, he has not done enough of in subsequent seasons. In particular, the Seahawks saw changes that caused their supremacy to evaporate throughout the 2013 and 2014 Super Bowl seasons, despite having earlier dominated the NFC West to the tune of a 10-3 record. Seattle’s record against NFC West rivals over the last two years has been 6-7. While one game below.500 is not horrifying, the results are a little misleading when one looks at the following scores:
1 Seahawks 19, Arizona Cardinals in Week 6 of 2022 9.
2 Week 9 of 2022: Cardinals 21, Seahawks 31,
3 2023’s seventh week: Seahawks 20, Cardinals 10.
4 2023’s eighth week: Seahawks 21, Cardinals 20
Naturally, it is significant when a club sweeps a division opponent in back-to-back seasons, but observant readers will quickly figure out that if a team has a 6-7 record versus division opponents and a 4-0 record against the division cellar dweller, that doesn’t bode well for the other nine results. It is particularly unsettling to consider the results of the Seahawks’ games versus their two fiercest rivals, the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers.
- Week 15 of 2022: 49ers 21, Seahawks 13
- Week 18 of 2022: Seahawks 19, Rams 16
- Wild Card Round in 2022: 49ers 41, Seahawks 23
- Week 1 of 2023: Rams 30, Seahawks 13
- Week 11 of 2023: Rams 17, Seahawks 16
- Week 12 of 2023: 49ers 31, Seahawks 13
- Week 14 of 2023: 49ers 28, Seahawks 16
A 2-7 record against the Rams and Niners is obviously far from ideal, but it gets even worse. The scores of those games combine to 234 to 147, or a point differential of -87, or -9.7 points per game. That means the expected outcome when setting foot on the field against the Rams and Niners is a hair shy of a double digit loss, and that’s without even taking into consideration that the two wins over Los Angeles in 2022 came while the Rams were without Matthew Stafford, Cooper Kupp and Aaron Donald. In other words, the Seahawks finished 2022 and 2023 without a single win over their biggest rivals without the benefit of facing a backup quarterback and one of the most dominant defensive players in league history not playing, and that’s simply not going to cut it.
So, one can argue that fielding a defense that couldn’t stop opponents running the ball or on third and long, or failing to field an offensive line that could open holes in the run game or consistently protect the quarterback in passing situations eventually led to Carroll’s downfall. However, at the end of the day, though, there’s no need to overcomplicate things and that means there’s no need to look any further than an inability to compete against the teams that have been the class of the NFC West in recent seasons.
