Seahawks' Pete Carroll 'Really Surprised' with Second Half in Loss to Rams
The Seattle Seahawks (0-1) fell to their division rival Los Angeles Rams (1-0) 30-13 at Lumen Field on Sunday in a game that will be largely remembered for completely different halves of football from coach Pete Carroll's team.
In the first half, the Seahawks moved the ball well and seemed to have things rolling, but after halftime, Seattle looked like a completely different team. After leading 13-7 at the half, the Seahawks would go on to be held scoreless while allowing 23 points from Matthew Stafford and the Rams offense.
The second-half performance left Carroll searching for answers.
“Starkly different to me with how we played in the first half to the second half,” Carroll said. “Trying to figure out how it got so erratic. We weren’t on it, we didn’t convert, we didn’t get the ball moving, we didn’t run the ball, we didn’t do anything. We did nothing in the second half.”
With so much hype and excitement surrounding the franchise after yet another impressive offseason, many expected Seattle to hand the Rams a rather convincing defeat, especially since L.A. is coming off a 5-12 season a year ago.
But with the NFL, things are rarely so clear cut, and in truth, the Seahawks got punched right in the mouth during the second half and couldn't recover.
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After a good first half, things fell apart as Seattle would finish with only 180 yards of total offense and completed just 2 of 9 third downs as the Rams ran a whopping 32 more plays.
For Carroll, he is in disbelief that his team didn't go on with the job in the second half.
“I’m really surprised and I’m disappointed that we weren’t cleaner,” Carroll said. “It’s 13 to 6, it’s no big deal, we were in pretty good shape and moved the ball well in the first half. Really felt like we should be able to take the next step and take control of the football game. Thought we were in great shape to do that. It’s shocking to me now that we weren’t able to take advantage of that.”
In what was a true tale of two halves, the Seahawks will need to go back to the drawing board and figure out where it all went wrong.
It doesn't get any easier for Seattle as they travel to Ford Field to take on the rising Detroit Lions on Sunday.
