The 0-2 Seahawks have a work in progress offense that hasn’t show much progress so far under new coordinator Brian Schottenheimer. And he knows that much of the problems fall on him.
“I need to do a better job, I’ll be the first to say that,” Schottenheimer told reporters on Thursday.
One of the problems seems to be that he’s got too many voices in his ear.
“It’s just one of those things where you get a lot of thoughts and advice as a play caller,” Schottenheimer explains. “Not just from Pete [Carroll], from everybody — until it’s third-and-22 and you’re backed up on your one-yard line, you’re like, ‘Hey guys, what do you like? Hello? Hello?’ I think some of it’s me learning Pete a little bit. Hey, look, I get paid to call the plays, I need to do a better job. Sometimes it gets you off your game. When you’re looking at different things — it’s not Pete, it’s just different things. It’s hard to find a rhythm sometimes, but I need to be better and I will be.”
So what specifically can he do to improve?
“If you look at Week One, I got away from the running game a little bit too fast,” Schottenheimer said. “This week, only having six plays in the third quarter, that was just one of those deals where we’re not converting third downs. The cool thing that I said to the guys is this: We know what the issues are, so when you know what the issues are, you can address them, you can fix them, you can emphasize that it’s time of possession, [it’s] third downs, [or] it’s sacks. If I was standing up there, or we as a staff were looking and saying, ‘Hey, you know, we really don’t know what the issues are and we just struggling.’ That’s not the case. We know what we need to clean up, we’ve been emphasizing that. We started last week with red zone and we did a nice job in the red zone last week. I think we’ll find our rhythm again this week. We know we need to be better. Nobody likes sitting here at 0-2. We’re competing to [improve]”
Indeed they are. But as the early-season losses mount, the margin for error shrinks. Sunday’s home opener against the Cowboys becomes the closest thing to a “must” win game that any team will face in September, and if the Seahawks are going to win it, they need more from the offense. Which means they need better from Schottenheimer.