The Seattle Seahawks suffered a brutal loss to the Bills in Buffalo Week 9, with many calling the defensive efforts into serious question. But coach Pete Carroll and his staff have always preached how important the turnover differential is and that could not have been any more apparent than on Sunday.
“We’re so connected to the turnover thing and all of the play before and all of the things we can talk about, but when you turn it over four times – teams that turn the ball over four times are 2-129 in the last 10 years or something like that – you just don’t have a shot,” Carroll said Monday morning on 710 ESPN Seattle. “It’s just so far out of where we’re expecting to be in leading the NFL in turnover ratio after this game, which was the goal going in.”
Quarterback Russell Wilson, who clearly didn’t have his best game either, was responsible for all four turnovers – two interceptions and two forced fumbles for loss. In his defense, however, he was knocked down a staggering 16 times in Buffalo.
“The two on the sacks, those are protection issues,” Carroll explained. “Those are us being in catch-up mode, that’s us having to throw the football, and we’ve got to protect better than that. We can’t let him get banged like that and he got a couple balls knocked out. I think you can talk through the two picks, but the forced fumbles, we’ve got to do a way better job as a gro[lawrence-newsletter]up and he’s got to get the ball out, too when he’s feeling the heat.”
Carroll did say that Wilson should be just fine this week despite the physical roughing he survived on the field. The QB and the rest of the Seahawks are set to return to practice on Wednesday morning.
[listicle id=68860]