Pete Carroll: "Playoffs" start now for Seahawks as they try to make postseason push

RENTON, Wash. - With four straight losses moving them outside of the playoff race as the season enters its final four weeks, head coach Pete Carroll said bluntly on Thursday that the playoffs start now for the Seattle Seahawks.

"The way I’m looking at this thing, with five other teams that are in this situation, the same one we’re in basically, the tournament is on. Here we go," Carroll said. "It’s one week at a time, and we have to fight our way out of this thing. We can still get better, and there’s areas that we are working on and parts of our game that we hope we can improve and take better advantage of guys. 

"This is still a wide-open opportunity. I don’t know how the other guys are looking at it, but I’m looking at it like it’s playoff time all the way down the stretch here. Every game is going to make a difference, as they always do, but it’s even more amplified now. I’m hoping that we can improve there and get a little bit better production to complement what we’re doing with the throwing game."

The first four-game losing streak of the Carroll era in Seattle has pushed a promising season to the brink of total disappointment. The Seahawks entered November leading the NFC West with a 5-2 record. A blowout 37-3 loss to the Baltimore Ravens brought the good vibes back down a notch, but the team was still sitting pretty at 6-3 entering the toughest stretch on the schedule.

The problem is the Seahawks haven't won a game since. Two losses to the San Francisco 49ers, and losses to the Los Angeles Rams and Dallas Cowboys have put Seattle in a position where they may need to win out to find their way into the playoffs come mid-January.

"I think ever since we started playing the Rams it’s been like that playoff mode because teams start to hone in to who they are, find their identity," wide receiver DK Metcalf said. "The past four or five games we’ve played have been championship, playoff contender type teams, I think every week from here on out is going to be that type of vibe, yes sir."

That gauntlet stretch continues this week as the 10-3 Philadelphia Eagles come to town on Monday night. The Eagles have lost back-to-back games to Dallas and San Francisco and are scuffling a bit themselves as well. Carroll has not lost a game to the Eagles during his tenure in Seattle, as Philadelphia has lost seven straight games to the Seahawks, including postseason.

"There is so much at stake from this point forward," Carroll said. "There is so much, with five other teams that are vying for this spot. It’s a run to the finish, we’ll see who wins the race. It’s exciting and we have to make the most of it and be attuned into it. Everybody is well aware, we haven’t missed that point from the other night, so everybody knows what’s going on. We have to put together a great week to prepare and make sure that we get this done."

In order for the Seahawks to win their final four games, they'll have to find a little bit more success than they have over the last month. So how far away is the team from playing the type of football they need to play?

"I would say we’re a couple plays and a couple penalties away," linebacker Bobby Wagner said. "I feel like there’s a lot of moments in certain games where penalties hurt us, where certain plays that don’t get executed right hurt us. I feel like we got to go back to the basics, got to go back to the foundation and make the plays when they need to be made and turn this thing around a little bit."

Added Metcalf: "I think in a lot of the games we played we’ve showed spurts of that," Metcalf said. "I think we’re just losing the consistency aspect of being the team we want to be because if you turn on a lot of the games we are scoring, we’re stopping teams, and our special teams are rolling. But we just got to do it at a more consistent basis."

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