Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll admitted after his team’s Week 3 win over the San Diego Chargers that the overly-aggressive execution at the end of the first half was his fault, writes Greg Johns of the Seattle PI.
“We didn’t handle the end of the half effectively and I was disappointed in that. I really didn’t do that well,” he said. "Honestly, I realized that after all those years at USC with our offenses being so dynamic and all, I got a little bold about our situations.
“We need to take care of business better. I need to do a better job and make sure we get our points when we get opportunities. They’re not always going to come back around again like it used to seem like it happened.
Danny O’Neil of the Seattle Times sums up exactly what happened and how it went wrong.
To review, Seattle had the ball at the San Diego 2 with 19 seconds left in the second quarter. The Seahawks ran Matt Hasselbeck, who was tackled at the 1. Seattle tried to shuttle its field-goal unit onto the field to attempt a kick, only to have time expire before the ball was snapped.
It was aggressive. In hindsight, it was too aggressive.
“I like the thought … we stuff it at ’em and knock it in the end zone and get a touchdown right there,” Carroll said. “But we really, in that instance, we’d like to have had a fourth-down opportunity, too, and that eliminated it.”
That kind of execution is easy to laugh off after a victory. Had the Seahawks failed to get two Leon Washington returns? The joke, and the heat, would be on Carroll in a big way.