A year after going 12-4, the Seahawks have slumped to a 3-6 start. On defense, the Legion of Boom has gone bust. On offense, things aren’t working the way they should.
On Wednesday, coach Pete Carroll was asked about the play calling of first-year offensive coordinator Shane Waldron.
“Let’s just look at what happened,” Carroll told reporters. “We had Russ [Wilson] playing, then he left in the Rams game. Then we had to bounce back with Geno [Smith], which he did a nice job, but we altered what we were doing to make sure that we gave ourselves a win. Then we come back at the Packers, and it was Russell’s first game back. I think we needed to settle everything down and get back to the ball that we liked earlier in the year. We thought that we started to get things rolling, but it’s been tumultuous in that regard. I think not having Chris [Carson] where we were really leaning on Chris has made a difference to us, too. Those are just the situations that he has had to deal with, and it hasn’t been easy. I’m looking forward, we have eight weeks to do something, so we will see where we wind up after that. We need to make progress.”
Indeed they do. And if they don’t, Wilson will once again want out.
He’s keenly aware of his legacy. He turns 33 soon. He has only one Super Bowl win. To become the player he wants to be, he needs more around him. So he can either hang around and wait for the Seahawks to reverse their fortunes, or he can stack the deck in his favor by finding a team with all the other pieces in place to be successful.
The Seahawks have seven weeks not only to turn around their season but also to turn around Wilson. If they end up missing the playoffs, Wilson isn’t going to be excited about the future. He’s going to be thinking about a future elsewhere.