Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin wasn’t trying to harm assistant coach Tom Cable, he was just trying to interrupt him.
But he apologized for a shove that was caught by television cameras, and explained himself afterward.
Baldwin said he regretted the second-quarter incident, in which Cable was talking to a huddle of players on the sidelines as they trailed 7-0, and Baldwin thought quarterback Russell Wilson should have been talking.
“I lost my cool. It’s 100 percent my fault,” Baldwin said, via Brady Henderson of ESPN.com. “At that moment, I was really frustrated with the offense as a whole. Not the coaching staff -- the players. Again, it goes back to our X’s and O’s. We had the playcalls. We just didn’t execute. Whether it was passing the ball, blocking, catching, jumping offsides, false starting, whatever it may be, we weren’t executing as players, and to me there is nothing a coach can say. We have to take accountability for that.”
Seahawks coach Pete Carroll dubbed it “no big deal,” and the Seahawks rebounded nicely, coming back for a 24-7 win. By the end of the first half, Baldwin and Cable were talking on the sidelines, and the veteran assistant had his arm around Baldwin as they walked off the field.
“Y’all know I love Cable to death,” Baldwin said. “Me and Cable have one of the best relationships from coach to player. That was 100 percent my fault. I already apologized to him. He knows how I am. It’s just at that moment, the players needed to realize it’s the players — it’s not the coaches.”
The kind of emotion Baldwin shows happens on many NFL sidelines, and when you win, it’s the kind of thing that’s reduced to a footnote.