The Seahawks have responded to their first season without a playoff berth since 2011 by making changes to their coaching staff this week.
Offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell and offensive line coach Tom Cable have been fired with speculation about more changes to come. Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin said right after the season that he didn’t think Bevell should be fired and said the onus was on the players to do a better job if the team wants better results.
During an appearance on ESPN Thursday, Baldwin didn’t waver from that talking point. He said the two coaches “did an extraordinary job” and that players have to recommit themselves in 2018.
“There’s a lot of things, but I think it all trickles down from us as building our culture and our environment in the locker room and in this building, obviously, this facility,” Baldwin said. “It starts with the top. [Coach Pete Carroll] has done a tremendous job in the past of preaching his philosophy and what he wants in the culture and the environment, and us as players, we’ve just got to go back to that, we’ve got to go back to the basics and really buy in again, because the formula is there; obviously, it’s there. We’ve been a very successful team the past six years, the past seven years. We’ve been to the playoffs consecutively, so the formula is still there. It’s just going back to the basics. I know a lot of people want to blow this up, make it bigger than what it is, but we’re not going to panic as players. We know the formula, we know what we have ahead of us, and we’re just going to go out there and do it.”
The formula may be the same, but the ingredients are going to be different next season. The changes to the coaching staff are expected to be followed by changes to the roster that push the team away from the mix that was responsible for that successful run and those remaining will be left to bridge the old days with the new..