710 ESPN Seattle on 17-15 loss to WFT

The Seahawks fell back to 3-8 that season, with a 17-15 loss to Washington Football team on Monday night as problems for coach Pete Carroll’s team continued to grow.

Gustafson: The 4 big worries after the Seahawks lost to Washington

As after every Seahawks game, we gathered the instant reactions from the votes from 710 ESPN Seattle. See what they have to say below, and tune in on Tuesday to begin full Seahawks coverage, starting with the Mike Salk Show at 6 a.m. and the Pete Carroll Show at 9:30 a.m.

I honestly don’t know what I just saw. It was really unrecognizable (well, apart from the last ride), at least offensively. The defense was fine. It did a pretty good job despite being in the field all night. But that wasn’t an NFL offense, let alone one with an elite franchise quarterback and some of the best guns in the league. That … was lazy.

We’ve seen the Seahawks dominated by a line of defense that is choking them with pressure – losses to the Rams and Packers stand out. We have seen them injure themselves with self inflicted wounds, penalties, and substitution errors. But we’ve never seen her so completely lost, so completely without answers.

That loss was different because so much of it fell on the coaching staff who couldn’t design an offense to get the ball to their playmakers and a quarterback who couldn’t select the open receiver, often missing high and low in the process.

It was staggering to lay down Russell Wilson like this. And while his finger injury and new offensive plan are clearly part of the problem, they don’t explain everything. I don’t think anyone knows exactly what we’re seeing and why it’s turned so far south, but it doesn’t look like the show we’ve seen for a decade and now it’s almost impossible to imagine all of the main characters returning for one further continuation.

Wash, rinse, repeat. It was like that this season, week after week. Absolutely nothing has changed.

The offensive is an absolute disaster! I honestly don’t even know what to say about this offense anymore, except I don’t care what Russell Wilson says about how good he is feeling – that finger is a problem. While the Seahawks made it interesting at the very end of the game, that offense is broken. Injuries to Russell and Chris Carson certainly play a role, but they struggled before these two were injured. Amazing how they went from being a franchise record in terms of points scored last season to a group playing together for the first time.

The defense has some nice moments in the game, but they can’t break away from the field. As much as the lack of an offensive contributes to their problems, the defense hardly helps each other when it comes to the different ball possession times. They abandoned an inaugural trip to see the Cardinals last week that was at 9:27 a.m. so the fatigue excuse doesn’t fit there. The second drive of the game for Washington tonight was 9:25. Again, fatigue is most likely an issue later in the game, but it happens long before it is a valid excuse.

The bottom line is that this is just not a good team. The rest of this season is an audition for everyone involved!

The Groz – Retired Host, 710 ESPN Seattle

Just one frustrating night in DC as hopes of the Seahawks playoffs ran out.

Before the final drive, the Hawks only had five first downs and less than 200 yards on the total offensive. You can’t play the ball without Chris Carson and for some reason Shane Waldron’s offensive playbook spends DK Metcalf. No excuse not to get him the ball.

Russell Wilson looked terrible up until that final drive, but this was a game against a 4-6 team with a backup QB that made mistakes to keep you in the game. The last race was definitely fun, but like everything this season it came off badly.

For the first time in over a decade, the Seahawks played the string for two months. Obviously, some big mistakes were made in the composition of this team and coaching staff. It will be interesting to see how the franchise reacts to that, but it definitely feels like tearing it down and trying something new. I’m just not sure what that is.

The late touchdown makes the result seem close, but make no mistake, the offense is irrevocably broken. A stretch of five rows of three in a row that spanned most of the second half crippled any chance of making a game, let alone winning, if the defense held out for most of the time.

No first-half goals for DK Metcalf are astounding, especially against a WFT squad who entered the game 30th in passing yards, which are allowed at 270 yards per game. It also seems so difficult for the offense every time to get only 10 yards, which is another headache when you have two potent receivers, a good tight end in Gerald Everett and a skilled running back in Alex Collins. Running the ball set up the first touchdown drive, but Seahawk’s running backs finished with just 10 handovers to running backs. Sure, there wasn’t a lot of room, but do 10 total carries allow enough sample size or balance to mitigate this defense?

It felt the same as it did last week and the week before, when the possession time twisted so much in favor of the opponent that the defense had nothing by the end of the fourth quarter because they had been on the field for so long. Last week it was a season low of 19:38 in possession of the ball, until it was promptly beaten this week with a new low of 18:20. Perhaps then it’s not so surprising that DK Metcalf was barely targeted – the Seahawks offensive was never on the field! WFT ran 79 games compared to 45 for the Seahawks, while Seattle only had 10 first downs (five on Final Drive) compared to 27 for the football team.

Many factors can play a role, but there is clearly something wrong with Russell Wilson. A few more falls tonight along with simply unseen receivers that were open. It’s so rare and atypical, but in the bag, Wilson seems to have a tenderness and discomfort we’ve never seen before. The offense will clearly only be the way Russell Wilson does it, and for now everything is stuck.

Change the record.

What can someone say now? Getting a single rushing first down and 2-1 possession (again) won’t do it in any NFL game, let alone with loopy RBs and the hope that the backups on your offensive line will provide enough to give Russell the time that he had to compose a victory on his 33rd birthday. But that wasn’t Russell Wilson. At least not the ones I remember.

That Seahawks offensive stuttered like a Nissan pickup from the 80s in the middle of winter, but this is officially another dimension of “uncharted territory” in the Pete Carroll era.

Give the Seahawks Defense Credit. It gave chance after chance and made big games when it was necessary to keep the score on a ball, but the ghost can only last until the gas runs out. Jamal’s interception in the first half, followed by an instant deep ball to Lockett, was beautiful, but it all ended with a fumble from Alex Collins in the next game and the offense never really recovered. Punt, punt, punt, punt and another punt followed. Fast forward to the exciting 2 minute exercise of a failed conversion and that’s all we have. Game over.

It feels like it’s been ages since we praised Shane Waldron and the first six quarters of the Seahawks season, but we all know this is unsustainable and has to give way. Change the record. Get a new dance partner. Buy a new truck. Some.

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