Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson has been sacked 18 times in four games, a 72-sack pace for the season. The Seahawks know that has to change.
"[W]e’re taking sacks at an alarming rate right now,” offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell told reporters on Wednesday. “We can improve it, it’s really in a lot of areas. You can’t really pin it on one group, one person. I know there’s a lot of concern with the offensive line, a lot of talk about that, but we can all do better. The quarterbacks in terms of getting the ball out on time, receivers shaking open on time, offensive line protecting them, myself in any way that I can to give us better chances to do all three of those things. We’ll just continue to work at it.”
Bevell otherwise tried to stay positive about the team’s ability to continue to win with so much pressure on Wilson.
“We’re just going to keep playing,” Bevell said. “The great thing about these guys is that every one of these guys came to work today, and were ready to look at the tape, they wanted to get better. They come out here and work extremely hard and they know there’s things that they’ve done well, they know there’s things that they can do better, all of us know that. We just love to be here. We’re excited to get back to work, we get another opportunity. We’re going to get better each and every time we go out and we feel like we’re doing that.”
Well, almost everyone loves to be there.
“We had some issues, and it wasn’t any one guy,” Carroll told reporters regarding the offensive line play. “It was just stuff happened, and we needed to help them better. This is the reality of it, there’s a lot of things that enter into it, and sometimes it’s getting the ball out when we have the chance to before the rush gets there.”
Carroll said the current configuration of blockers won’t change, and that the unit hasn’t regressed.
“I think this is all just putting money in the bank and trying to figure it out, and getting where we can use the experiences that we’ve had effectively,” Carroll said. “It takes a while. There’s some things that they saw again for the first time that an experienced group might be able to identify a little.”
It’s a prime example of the impact of reduced offseason and preseason practice time, with defenses ahead of offensive lines early in the season and offensive lines struggling on the fly to improve. There’s a good chance the Seattle offensive line will indeed improve.
Actually, it has to improve. It can’t get much worse.