How’d sunken Seahawks get here? Years of O-line mistakes have caught up to Russell Wilson

Russell Wilson’s eyes were wet and reddened.

Jamal Adams was in tears, too. Tears of frustration.

“Everybody is pissed off,” Adams said.

“But no one (outside our locker room) cares. ...I just hate losing.”

Yet this was most noticeable about these sunken, 3-8 Seahawks as they left the nation’s capital early Tuesday morning: their focus and approach for the rest of this lost season had changed.

As Monday night became Tuesday morning just outside D.C., defeated-looking Pete Carroll talked of playing for “the pride of it.”

It was a stark contrast to last week. Carroll, Wilson, co-captain Bobby Wagner and top receiver DK Metcalf talked of going 7-0 to finish this season and storm into the playoffs.

After he mostly malfunctioned again in Seattle’s 17-15, last-play loss at Washington, Wilson talked of a different kind of tempest.

“We are in a storm,” Wilson said.

The playoffs are only mathematically possible for Seattle. Forget those. Instead, Wilson talked on his way out of Washington about the “obligation” he and teammates have to stay dedicated to their jobs over the season’s final six games.

“It’s been tough. It’s been challenging. I know we haven’t faced this moment,” Wilson said, after his third poor game and loss in three starts since he returned from surgery on his throwing hand in October. “But this moment will pass, and we will come through on the other end of it. ...

“I thank God that I get to do this every day that I get to do this. It’s a blessing, for sure. Like I’ve said to you guys before, I consider it pure joy to go through the trials and tribulations, because in testing my faith it builds perseverance.

“I’m going to persevere. This team is going to persevere...that’s all we really can do. It’s about going back out there and getting back to work and doing what we love to do.”

Inexplicable?

Seattle has been to the playoffs eight times in the last nine years. The team has a perennial All-Pro in Wagner, Pro Bowl veterans in Wilson, Adams, Quandre Diggs, Duane Brown, Metcalf, Tyler Lockett and Nick Bellore.

Bellore is the special-teams captain. On Seattle’s improbable, successful onside kick with 15 seconds left Monday night, he lined up incorrectly inside instead of outside the right hash mark required by NFL rule. That penalty negated the recovery.

The Seahawks have three players who were the highest-paid at their positions in league history when they signed their current contracts: Wilson ($140 million) and Wagner ($54 million) in 2019 and Adams ($70 million this summer).

How can one explain having all that yet entering December 3-8, above only winless Detroit at the bottom of the entire NFC?

“You can’t,” Adams said.

“Obviously this is not something that we’ve seen coming. Obviously, it’s here. Somehow, we’ve got to figure it out.”

Adams had his second interception of the season Monday night. Then the strong safety delivered the hit on fourth down that led to Washington tight end Logan Thomas losing the ball on the ground for an incomplete pass at the goal line. That play gave Wilson and the offense the chance to drive 96 yards with 2 minutes left for the touchdown that would have forced overtime, had Wilson not thrown an interception on the two-point conversion try.

Adams spoke directly of his team’s need to be a professional now. He inferred every Seahawk’s preparation is about to get tested beginning Wednesday when Seattle starts practicing for its home game against hot division rival San Francisco (6-5) on Sunday.

Adams is one of the few Seahawks who has been here before. He played his first three NFL seasons for the woebegone Jets. That was before Carroll and Seattle general manager John Schneider traded two first-round draft choices to New York to acquire Adams in the summer of 2020.

To add insult to all of this losing, the Jets currently own the fourth-overall pick at the top of next spring’s draft — the Seahawks’ pick if they hadn’t traded it for Adams.

“You’ve got to continue to work, continue to grind, understand your purpose. Why do you do this? You know, day in and day out,” he said. “It doesn’t just start — you can’t just roll your helmet out there, OK? This is the NFL. It starts in practice. It starts in the preparation, outside of the building.

“Whatever it is, every individual on this football team has to play at a high caliber. We know that...

“It’s obviously frustrating. But at the end of the day, we have a couple more opportunities to switch this thing into a positive manner.”

Not actually inexplicable

So that’s where these Seahawks are.

How did they get here?

How did Wilson go from brilliant for 10 years — the only Seattle quarterback to win a Super Bowl, owner of 26 team records and the most comeback wins in the fourth quarter and overtime in the NFL since his debut season of 2012 — to bad this season?

How bad: He’s thrown interceptions in the end zone three times in his three games since his return from surgery (in half the time his surgeon told him he might be out, by the way). Since his return he’s been shut out for the first time in his career. He led possessions in Washington that resulted in five consecutive three and outs, for a total of 25 yards in those five drives. That was from the second quarter to 2 minutes remained in the game. Seattle went from up 7-3 to down 17-9 in that span.

All this has put focus rightly on first-year offensive coordinator Shane Waldron. Carroll hired Waldron from the rival Los Angeles Rams in January to replace the fired Brian Schottenheimer — and to produce results the opposite of what’s happening with Seattle’s offense.

Asked Tuesday on his weekly morning-after-game radio show with KIRO AM what Waldron can do to help the Seahawks right now, Carroll said, tellingly: “We were open. We got open on plays...”

That is on Wilson.

And there’s a reason for that.

Gerald Everett has been on the team only for 10 regular-season games. But the tight end Seattle signed this spring from the Rams nailed the root of Wilson’s and the offense’s problems, and how it’s come to this bottoming out.

“You got guys coming at him from every direction, from every angle,” Everett said around midnight Monday in Maryland. “Anybody can sit back and say: ‘I would have did this, I would have did that’ after the game. ...

“We struggle in protection. And the whole league knows that.”

Bingo.

Years of being relentlessly pressured behind an offensive line annually poor in pass protection have caught up to Wilson and the Seahawks.

The previous Wilson covered those flaws with miraculous escapes and plays — despite the O-line Carroll and Schneider haven’t fixed.

The current Wilson rarely does.

He turned 33 years old Monday while in Washington. He entered this season having been sacked more than any other NFL quarterback in the last nine seasons.

This failed season has showed the disastrous results and cumulative effects of getting pressured for a decade. Of Carroll and Schneider choosing to draft wide receivers, cornerbacks and defensive linemen at the top of recent, failed drafts, instead of top offensive linemen. Of not spending big in years they could, such as this one, on blockers in free agency. Of deciding for 2021 to go with last year’s centers Ethan Pocic, the 2020 starter, and Kyle Fuller, benched after seven starts this season, instead of upgrading that vital position in the draft or free agency.

Carroll said following Monday night’s game he thought the pass protection was fine. He noted Wilson got sacked just twice. Indeed, that is a fine day, by Seattle’s subterranean standards of pass blocking.

One of those two sacks at Washington was Wilson inexplicably taking one on the final drive, when he was out of time outs, well outside the pocket with no one open and time to throw the ball away. It was a play a first-year college quarterback can’t make, let alone a 10-year franchise cornerstone.

Yet the sack numbers and the analytics that show the Seahawks are, by numbers, a top-10 NFL team in pass protection aren’t measuring Wilson ducking and giving up on plays. Because he’s been hit and pressured so much the last decade, he often loses eyes on open receivers down the field, before the pass rushers are even to him on drop backs. Sometimes it’s like ghosts are sacking him, ghosts only he can feel.

It happens multiple times, most games. Has for years.

On a night Carroll said the pass protection was fine, Wilson got hit a season-high 10 times by Washington, including on completions.

Those hits have a cumulative effect.

Freddie Swain said something interesting outside the locker room following the Washington loss. The receiver who caught Wilson’s 32-yard touchdown pass with 15 seconds left said “I was open” early on the next snap, the fateful two-point play. And he was. He was the second crosser behind the long crossing right of Metcalf across the middle of the end zone, left to right. Swain was open while Wilson was noticing Metcalf had two Washington defenders on him to Swain’s right.

Swain said Wilson didn’t see he was open because when he was, he noticed Wilson moving up in the pocket to step away from what the quarterback felt was more pressure from Washington’s pass rush. By the time Wilson got his eyes reoriented off the sack guys onto Swain in the end zone, Swain was covered.

Analytics and sack numbers don’t account for that real, game-deciding consequence of 10 years of Wilson getting pressured.

Kendall Fuller intercepted Wilson’s pass about 2 seconds after Swain would have caught an uncontested two-point pass to tie it.

Game, and season, over.

Nine months after he famously said “I’m frustrated with getting hit too much” — a swipe at his offensive line that had him explaining himself to left tackle Brown this past offseason — Wilson said Monday night leaving Washington: “It’s not the O-line’s fault. I can be better.

“So that’s what we’ll do.

“If anybody believes, I believe,” Wilson said.

“For 10 years, we’ve believed.”