Pete Carroll: "So Many Guys Came Through And Made Big Plays"

Pete Carroll (0:00)

Well, that was a heck of a football game tonight. It was a hard game for anybody to lose.

I loved the way our guys played. Played hard, tough, and creative, and executed, and battled the whole time. It was a fantastic effort, and they gave them credit, too. They were playing hard, too.

Totally played for the moment, and did it, and were there, and had great leadership from our older guys. We had good play from the young guys, too. And it's unfortunate that the game is, you know, it feels like there was a whole nother factor in this game. I don't know, you guys saw a lot better than I did, but there's just way too many penalties in this game. And we got, for both sides, we got to get out of that kind of football.

I thought so many guys came through and made big plays, tough plays, and showed great heart and great resolve to hang in there. We had to score three times in one sequence from the inside of the 10-yard line. We had to stop them inside the 15-yard line a couple different times and got that done, knocked them back out of touchdown range. So many good sudden change kind of situations.

I'm proud as hell of these guys and the way we fought. And unfortunately, you know, there might be five plays in this game that could change the whole game. And unfortunately, that's the way it turned out. So I thought Geno did a great job. Our guys up front, the drive before half was just a stellar drive for our guys. And it was, I went right to the guys about protection to give him a chance to throw the balls that he had to throw. The guys made the catches, of course, but I thought the guys up front did a great job against a really good fast-rush team. And our guys up front on the other side, too, I think we got to them four times, you know, them and Saxton a month. And so our guys were harassing them and gave us a chance and kept us in the ballgame. A couple of guys got banged up. Jordan Brooks got an ankle. And Zach banged his knee on the turf. And it doesn't look like a knee injury. It looks like a bruised knee kind of thing. But both those guys got where they couldn't get back in the game.

It was all part of it. I thought the rhythms were... We varied it throughout and frustrated their rush. At times where they have been having a lot of success. The guys made the plays, made the catches, and I think it was just a really good combination of stuff. We finally put together a really good third down night on offense. And it was against a really good third down team, I think third in the league in third down defense. And you felt it. You could see us move the football, and we made the plays, and we made the throws and the catches and the protections and all that to get that done.

That's where we're trying to go.

SPEAKER_2 (2:51)

For the offensive line, how much is he able to get back out there?

Pete Carroll (2:55)

I can't tell you anything about how he played or nothing, but it was just good to have him.

I'm sure he contributed to that. Because I find myself right here really praising their effort all night long. And he was part of it.

SPEAKER_2 (3:07)

Even though the result didn't go the way you want, for the offense to come back with that performance after the last two games, just how big of a being going for them.

Pete Carroll (3:14)

Absolutely. That's us right there. And I thought Zach pounded the football, and kept it going. We didn't run the ball as well as we wanted to, but we ran the ball enough so that we could run our offense.

And we converted on third down so that we were still out there, and we got to use our play pass game, which is one of the best things we do.

And Geno did a great job with all of that, and magnificent catches too throughout the night. They kept us going. Noah's catch was crazy, and a bunch of them. We were really one catch away from really making this thing go our way.

SPEAKER_2 (3:43)

What happened on the delay before the field goal?

Pete Carroll (3:46)

I'm glad you asked me that. Okay, what happened on that play is the officials moved the football from the middle to the hash, and they're supposed to reset the clock, and they didn't do it. And so we're griping about that, and the time got, I screwed it up. I should have called time out, but I was grousing about the fact that they should have, I was still trying to get them to stop it, you know.