Seahawks begin to turn page on disappointing end to year after missing playoffs

RENTON, Wash. - The Seahawks had hoped that a win Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals would allow them to come back to Seattle with a playoff game to prepare for next weekend. Instead, the team convened one last time on Monday to clean out their lockers after a season of missed opportunity.

"It was unfortunate," linebacker Bobby Wagner said. "You know, we didn't make the plays we needed to make. We had some games that we could have won that ultimately worked against us. And so you know, we just need to find a way to make those plays, find a way to sustain the success we had early on in the season."

A 6-3 start to the season had the Seahawks in the lead in the NFC West at the midway point of the year with a lot of belief in the potential of the team to accomplish bigger things. Instead, Seattle saw its defensive performance completely crater in the second half of the year with the first four-game losing streak of the Pete Carroll era significantly undermining the team's chances. But even then, the Seahawks controlled their playoff hopes with two weeks left to play only for a 30-23 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers to again take that control out of their hands.

"It's just unfortunate. It feels like garbage when you don't play well," head coach Pete Carroll said on his radio show on Seattle Sports 710 AM on Monday morning.

The run defense in particular is one of the most glaring shortcomings for the team at the end of the year.

Fixing the run defense was such an emphasis for the team this offseason coming off a performance in 2022 where they finished 30th in the league with over 150 yards per game allowed. The emphasis seemed to have made a difference with Seattle holding each of their first five opponents under 115 rushing yards, and two games against Carolina and Cincinnati with less than 50 yards allowed.

But the Seahawks allowed teams to rush for at least 125 yards in 10 of their last 12 games this season with three games of over 200 yards allowed, including each of the last two weeks against Pittsburgh and Arizona.

"I think when you give up 200 (yards) on the ground, almost everything went wrong," linebacker Jordyn Brooks said. "You can't just point it at one person or one coach or you can't single out just one thing. It was a variable of a lot of things that happened and so I think that just over the course, I don't know, somehow, some way we just let it slip from us. And so that's one that's going to be hurting us in the offseason.

"It stings. Like you say, we started off pretty good. And maybe we got too high on ourselves. You know, maybe that's why you always kind of got to stay even keeled, you can't get too low, get too high. Maybe we started feeling like that at some point in the season and then it just started slipping away from us. And then once one team sees what happened to you, the next team is going to do it and everybody gets in on the fun. And so that's kind of what happened to us."

In the end, the Seahawks ranked 31st in the NFL this season in rushing defense with an average of 138.4 yards per game allowed.

"When you're playing defense as a defender in this league, that's the most frustrating things," safety Julian Love said. "Somebody running the ball on you is just like a me-versus-you type of mentality and we lost that towards the end of the year."

Carroll attributed many of the failings to the youth on the team during his radio appearance on Monday.

"We played young," he said. "We made too many young team, young guys kind of mistakes all the way across the board. We're on the move. It's a team that is growing. It's a team that's got potential and future and all of that.

"We missed  one of the Ram games. We missed the Dallas game. We missed the Pittsburgh game, and almost missed this one for a multitude of small reasons that are going to go away. They're going to get better as guys have the experience to make the right read, to make the right play, to apply the right tackle. … That stuff has to go away. Other players have to play or the guy's got to get better and you've got to coach, continue to work to coach better, all aspects of it is how you fix things. And so I think this team is going to really move and it's got a good nucleus and a good element about the make up."

Carroll believes that even in missing the playoffs this year, the team is closing to reaching their ultimate goals than they were after last season.

"It's so clear," he said. "We've improved. We've got some guys in situations that have helped us and we should grow and we should come together in even a more powerful way. This team's got future. This team's got real future and not everybody can say that. They don't know. There's nothing to keep us from thinking that. It's an exciting outlook for the future and we'll see what happens."

Carroll also reiterated his intention to be the guy coaching the team next season as well.

"I plan to be coaching this team and I told you that I love these guys and that's what I would like to be doing and see how far we can go," Carroll said. "You know, I'm not worn out. You know, I'm not tired. I'm not any of that stuff. I need to do a better job and I need to help my coaches more and we need to do a better job of coaching and there's a lot of area for improvement.

But while Carroll expects to be back, that won't be the case for many others that were on the sidelines on Sunday in Arizona. It would not be a shock to see changes to the coaching staff given another bad year statistically from the defensive side of the ball. 

Wagner, Brooks, defensive tackle Leonard Williams, guards Damien Lewis and Phil Haynes, tight end Noah Fant, center Evan Brown and defensive end Mario Edwards are among a group of players that will be free agents in March. Safeties Jamal Adams and Quandre Diggs, wide receiver Tyler Lockett, and tight end Will Dissly all have contract situations next season that could factor into potentially being released from the roster. 

Wagner and Brooks both said they want to be back with Seattle, but know that nothing is guaranteed.

"Hopefully it's here but I've had it not happen that way, so I can say I'm prepared for anything," Wagner said.

Added Brooks: "I have no idea honestly. It's a lot of things that play into these things. And so I'd love to be back here, but at the same time, you know, if I'm not here, you know, I know somebody else will be happy to take me so we'll see how it all plays out. We'll just play it by ear."

Some previous offseasons for Seattle have appeared pretty straightforward with the decisions that were going to be coming. That doesn't seem to be the case this year as many questions will have to be answered as to what path the team will take this winter.

"This is the time when the real focused planning begins," Carroll said. "There's planning that's been going on, there's discussions and conversations going on about how are you going to go on, how the future is going to be and what's coming. You know, Johnny (Schneider) and I are always talking about that stuff forever. But this is when the real business starts to take place. And so there's things that have to be done and decisions that have to be made and choices and all kinds of stuff. That's what this time of the year is you know, and we'll see how we go."