Pete Carroll: "I Believe These Guys Will Bounce Back"

Pete Carroll (0:01)

We came in here off of the Leverett Goal to play these guys, and we just got big played by their guys on offense too many times. I said, we're going to gain today. There was just a bunch of explosive plays. Doing the things that they do, there's nothing new. There's stuff that they did, they executed really well. Made some great throws when the guys were open, down the field freely, nice job of that. But just too many explosive plays to hold these guys in check and then.

And gotta give them a lot of credit. They're a good club.

Had we done those things, it would have been a much tighter football game if we had a chance. We were able to score, we were able to move the ball a little bit. I thought Drew did an excellent job in this game.

As you can expect going into a game like this, you're going to come out after, you know, say there's three or four plays or two or three plays that you wish wouldn't happen the way they did. And you just hope that they didn't beat you in the game. And but he did a lot of cool stuff and came through for us to give us a chance.

So we got banged up a little bit. Spoon got bruised ribs. I don't know how extensive that is.

If he could have gone back anyway, it was not a head injury. It was a riveted injury.

And Artie Burns got banged a little bit. Should be okay. So we'll see. So we came out of it all right.

It's hard. It's hard to come back. It's been too many weeks to come back in the long with losses. And it's been a challenge. It's a challenge for all of us. And here we go again. We're going against one of the best teams in the NFC this next week. This is the challenge portion of this season. We'll see if we can make it through it. The fourth quarter of this season is still there for us to do something with it. And we'll see if we can. And I believe these guys are going to bounce back and be ready to go again. And it's a muddy night at home. And we've got to get ready and have a great week in preparation to do that. And see if we can get a game. We've got to get back on track. Let's lose when things suck.

SPEAKER_2 (2:02)

You said it was stuff the 49ers had done already in the beginning.

Pete Carroll (2:07)

They ran a couple of sweeps.

That's their favorite play. So we've been practicing against it all the whole time. That's what I mean by that. And so there was nothing special about that. They went to DB on a D.Crossroad. He's been doing that his whole career. You know, when we saw it, we just didn't play it right.

Kittle in the short yard, in a play action pass, and the heavy personnel, you know. He's been doing that his whole career. So there's nothing new about those things. We didn't execute well enough to stop those opportunities. Because that's the stuff we practice and we just come through and make those plays.

He ran around a little bit, but he couldn't go. He couldn't go in one direction with any confidence. And if he could, he would have played for sure. He was absolutely of the mindset to go. And he came out early today and went through an extensive workout. He got a lot of stuff done under control, but he didn't have it. He didn't have the ability to push in one direction. And so that's classic for going. So it just wasn't the right thing to do, just throw him out there under those circumstances. So he didn't call it off. He made me stop him off.

I thought he did a great job. Right from the beginning, the opening drive was beautiful. And that's a really good sign for Drew. It wasn't too big for him in any way. He wasn't too nervous. He wasn't jittery at all. He came right down the field and threw a great ball to DK to get us in the end zone. And throughout, his calm on the sidelines, his ability to communicate about what was going on and how to adjust and the things that were coming up in the next sequence, in the next series, he was on it. He was a real pro about it. So he did a really good job.

I don't know that. It certainly helps us. That was part of the thinking. He couldn't play today.