The Seattle Seahawks came out swinging in Atlanta Week 8, entering the break at the half up 24-0 over the Falcons. The next two quarters of play, however, featured a completely different team.
The Falcons were able to have their way with Seattle in the third quarter, putting points on the board and forcing critical stops that left the Seahawks going nowhere quickly.
Coach Pete Carroll acknowledged the stark difference in the final 30 minutes of play.
“John Schneider wanted me to say to get this thing started right – that this was really a tale of two halves,” Carroll said in his postgame press conference. “That’s for John. It couldn’t have been more obvious. We have been saying for a long time you can’t win a game in the first half, man, and that’s just what that was. So clearly illustrated. We had a great first half, everybody did everything exactly the way we wanted to do it, functioned like crazy, and then it just didn’t go that way after halftime and we have to do obviously a much better job on that.”
The Seahawks seemed to let off the gas, playing just hard enough to finally eke out a win. Carroll shouldered the majority of the blame for the negative turnaround on Sunday.
“I didn’t do a good enough job,” Carroll explained. “Obviously they went out there and we looked like we were a totally different team, so I don’t know. There are a lot of things. I’m not going to go into it, but there’s a lot of things that take place when you don’t play well and I just got to do a better job making sure that that doesn’t happen.”
Carroll often touts the mantra “it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish,” but if Seattle is going to make a serious bid for the postseason, the Seahawks will need to finish much stronger than Sunday.
