Frank Clark is getting a lot of love amid a good start to the season, and he’s obviously enjoying it.
The best part of the Pete Carroll mic’d up video is the ref telling Pete to tell Frank Clark to stop flexing while he’s on top of the QB. pic.twitter.com/yuIOpnhops
— Parker Lewis (@ParkerLewisJR) September 27, 2018
But the big question: Will the Seahawks show him some financial affection at some point?
Continue reading Clark working toward his payday; will it come from Hawks?
The last time the Seahawks traveled to Arizona, in November, they were already beaten up — and then lost Richard Sherman and Kam Chancellor forever.
This time, the Seahawks enter their Arizona preparation with a lot of positive news: Doug Baldwin and Justin Britt returned to practice, Mychal Kendricks will be available again this week, and Pete Carroll and Earl Thomas are “in a good place” after the non-practice drama last week.
Over the past three years, the Seahawks have drafted eight players in the third round — a league-best haul created by comp picks and draft trades that figured to help forge the next core of Pete Carroll’s team.
But it hasn’t so far — at least not as much as Carroll and John Schneider surely hoped it would.
With about 20 percent of this season complete, only one of those eight guys has become a starter and only two others are even contributing much.
That has to be disappointing after Schneider set up Seattle for some quality drafts in 2016 and 2017 — 11 picks in the first two days. Of seven third-rounders from those drafts, Shaquill Griffin is the only one to crack the first string (he has two interceptions this season).
Before the season, Brian Schottenheimer said his key for winning offensive football is the number 53: The combination of pass completions and runs that typically result in victory.
“If you rushed the ball, say, 30 times and throw 23 completions, that was like the second determining factor of wins and losses after turnovers,” Schottenheimer told The Seattle Times. “Some weeks, it’s going to be different and it’s going to be 33 completions and 20 rushing attempts. But we are always going to go in with the understanding that we should be able to run the ball, and believing and expecting we can do it at a high level.”
The Hawks hadn’t done that in the first two weeks. They had run the ball just 38 times and completed 41 passes. The combo tally was 35 in the loss in Denver, where they also broke even in the turnover battle. In Chicago, the formula netted 44 and another split in turnovers.
But, in their 24-13 win over Dallas, they ran it 39 times and completed 16 passes — hitting the magic number (Pete Carroll calls it an even 50) and also winning the takeaway battle 3-0.
Earl Thomas and company, take a bow. Oh, Earl already did?
Well, he deserved to. Along with Bradley McDougald, Chris Carson, Tyler Lockett and the rest of the Hawks, who finally got on the board and avoided the dreaded 0-3 start.
The Seahawks played great defense, overcame a reshuffled offensive line, ran the ball and took advantage of Dallas’ defensive blunders in a 24-13 win Sunday.
The Seahawks need to end this soon.
They have enough problems without having to put up with the drama of a star player who refuses to practice. Time to trade Earl Thomas. Take the second-rounder and move on.
The Hawks reportedly are considering fining him for missing two practices last week as they prepared to play his favorite team, Dallas.
Earl Thomas sat out a couple of practices and Pete Carroll was evasive in his explanation, calling it a “personal” issue. That led to fair speculation that the Hawks might be talking trade. But Dallas denied it was talking with the Hawks again, and then Thomas basically declared he was playing against his favorite team.
Russell Wilson has a hamstring injury but says he’s “ready to go.” Meanwhile, Ethan Pocic is out, with J.R. Sweezy moving to left guard as D.J. Fluker returns at right guard. Justin Britt (shoulder) is expected to miss more than just one game, meaning Joey Hunt will start at center. It also sounds like Doug Baldwin will be out several more weeks.
On defense, Bobby Wagner said he will start vs. the Cowboys after doing the “grown-up” thing and sitting out Week 2 (he watched the game with Cliff Avril and Kam Chancellor). Mychal Kendricks could be available as his suspension appeal continues to be reviewed by the NFL — but he is questionable with an ankle injury.
Robert De Niro’s “Meet the Parents” character would be disappointed. Pete Carroll, Brian Schottenheimer and Russell Wilson would not make Jack Burns’ “circle of trust.”
They can’t even create their own triangle of trust with the Seahawks. Wilson does not trust Schottenheimer’s scripted plays, so he holds the ball too long, which puts the Hawks in deficits. Then Carroll gets impatient and orders Schottenheimer to abandon his balanced attack and take deep shots. When those fail and the Hawks are in desperation mode, Wilson starts calling more audibles. But, because his lack of trust helped put them in this position, Carroll and Schottenheimer don’t trust him to do that.
On top of that, no one buys Carroll’s explanations for his running back roulette.
It’s a vicious circle of antitrust.
The Seahawks could easily be 1-1, even 2-0, if Russell Wilson had played the way he is capable of — and if Brian Schottenheimer had called better games and if Pete Carroll had kept his stupid offensive opinions to himself.
But the Hawks are 0-2 because Wilson followed up a poor first game with an even worse second effort, Schottenheimer still didn’t help him enough and Carroll admittedly messed up the OC’s playcalling by telling him to call deep passes in the third quarter of the 24-17 loss in Chicago.
The Seahawks are about to play their first game without Bobby Wagner or K.J. Wright since 2011, but — other than Wagner — what are the Seahawks really going to miss Monday in Chicago that they weren’t already missing?
In their 27-24 loss in Denver, they were without Wright (knee) and deactivated Nazair Jones and Poona Ford — and the Broncos rolled up 470 yards. That was with Wagner, Tre Flowers, Delano Hill and Tom Johnson on the field.
How much worse can it be without them?
Continue reading Even without Wagner, can defense really be any worse?
CHAWK TALK: Everything being said about the Seahawks 