To illustrate why I like Pete Carroll, let me compare him to two other football personalities: quarterback Jim Plunkett and coach Bill Walsh.

Not too many of you young whippersnappers who read this site are old enough to remember Jim Plunkett.  He was a Heisman trophy winner who led Stanford to two Rose Bowl victories, and the Raiders to two Super Bowl championships.  Although their chronologies differ, he and Carroll have some commonalities.  They both had stellar college careers.  Both of them bombed out with the New England Patriots, but hung in there to find success in the NFL.  After the Patriots, Plunkett played in San Francisco for a couple of futile years, while Carroll did the same coaching with the Jets.  Plunkett finally landed with the Raiders, where he found success.  In Carroll’s case, NFL success is yet to come, but if comparable history is any predictor the third time will be the charm.

Pete Carroll also has similarities with Bill Walsh.  He was known as a genius for creating the West Coast offense, which made profound and lasting changes in the way that professional football is played.  What most overlooked about Walsh was his superior eye for spotting talent and putting that talent in a position to succeed.  His eye for talent was not limited to guys playing football -- he also knew how to spot coaches.  Remember Mike Holmgren?  The Bill Walsh coaching tree has branches and twigs intertwined with every franchise in the NFL, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame is well represented by Walsh draftees.  That eye for talent is what Carroll shares with Walsh, and Carroll may yet prove to be an even better draft executive than Walsh.

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From day one, and without competition, Tarvaris Jackson was named the starting quarterback by Pete Carroll.  After an 0-2 start, impatience and criticism from fans grew large, and Jackson received most of the blame for the offense’s struggles.  In the game against Arizona, boos and chants for Charlie Whitehurst roared from the stands at Century Link Field.

Two weeks after Jackson was injured during the win against the Giants, Whitehurst was named the starter against Cleveland.  In that game, the Browns offense scored a total of six points, yet the Seahawks still lost.  Whitehurst, despite having two weeks to prepare to play against a subpar team, went 12-30 for 97 yards, 0 touchdowns, and 1 interception.  A week later, Whitehurst got the start again at home against Cincinnati, but was benched for Tarvaris Jackson at the end of the first quarter.  Let me repeat that: Pete Carroll decided that an injured Jackson (pectoral strain, plus a knee injury that occurred later in the game) was a better option than a healthy Whitehurst.

With this being the final year remaining on Whitehurst’s contract, this season will likely be his last in Seattle.  Whitehurst had two starts to prove himself, but the only thing he proved is that Pete Carroll made the right decision when he named Jackson the starting quarterback.  Even if Seattle drafts a quarterback in the first round of next year’s draft, the immediate future of the team belongs to Jackson, and I expect that he will remain the starter through at least the end of the 2012 season. 

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I'll hold off on making comments until I've had a chance to watch the game, but the Seahawks win!

The Seahawks have an opportunity this afternoon to earn their first back-to-back win of the season as well as a second victory on the road to go along with their win against the Giants back in week five.

The Rams are struggling this year.  On paper, they're half of a good team; St. Louis is awful when it comes to passing the ball (27th in passing yards per attempt, 28th in completion percentage, 32nd in sacks allowed) and defending against the run (29th in rushing yards allowed per attempt, 32nd in rushing yards allowed per game), but reasonably okay at running the ball (12th in rushing yards per attempt, 16th in rushing yards per game) and defending against the pass (16th in passing yards allowed per attempt, 16th in sacks, 12th in passing yards allowed per game). 

That last one is suprising at first glance, especially considering that Rams have already had to put six cornerbacks on injured reserve this season, but the above numbers are also consistent with a team that's outscored early and often -- their opponents run up the score, then ease off on the pass so they can grind out the rest of the clock with their ground game.  Their scoring stats back up that conclusion: their defense is 25th in TDs allowed per passing attempt and tied for 11th with seven other teams in rushing TDs allowed, while their offense is 32nd in TDs scored per passing attempt and tied for 24th with six other teams for rushing TDs scored.

In short, this is a prime opportunity for the Seahawks' two new starting offensive linemen, RG Paul McQuistan and RT Breno Giacomini, to get some in-game experience working alongside the rest of the o-line.  With a good showing against St. Louis, o-line coach Tom Cable will have something positive to build on going into the upcoming stretch of three home games in a row (versus the Redskins, Eagles, and a rematch with the Rams).  After the endless series of almost-but-not-quite finishes that plagued the Seahawks through their first eight games, here's hoping for a much stronger showing to kick off the second half of the season.

On another note, the television stations here in Eugene have apparently decided not to broadcast the Seahawks-Rams game, so I may end up being largely absent from the game thread today.  Instead, I'll probably end up having to choose between watching the Chargers versus the Bears or the Cardinals versus the 49ers while I sulk and wait for the game I really wanted to watch to become available on NFL Rewind.  (I miss you, KING 5.)

According to Pro Football Weekly, RT James Carpenter tore his ACL in practice yesterday and has been placed on injured reserve.  Add to that the loss of RG John Moffitt, who suffered a season-ending knee injury in last Sunday's game against the Ravens, and the entire starting right side of the offensive line has been lost in less than a week.

Both players will require knee surgery to repair the damage, which puts their availability for next season into question.  Recovering from knee surgery can take as little as six months, but nine to twelve months is a more realistic timeline.  Since both players suffered their injuries in early November, I wouldn't expect to see them back until somewhere between August and November of next year.

OT Breno Giacomini is the favorite to replace Carpenter in the starting lineup.  From what I've seen of him, Giacomini does not appear to be as physicaly able as Carpenter, but what he lacks in that regard he more than makes up for in attitude and tenacity.  For an NFL o-lineman, playing with a chip on your shoulder is as good an equalizer as any.

For now it looks like Paul McQuistan will be Moffitt's likely replacement, given his greater experience with Tom Cable's blocking system, but I wouldn't rule out Lemuel Jeanpierre taking over the job at some point.  Both were suited up and active last Sunday, but it was Jeanpierre who was asked to take over for Moffitt for the remainder of the game, not McQuistan.

According to Jason La Canfora, John Moffitt's knee injury is serious enough to require surgery, so he is out for the rest of the year.  Backup lineman Lemuel Jeanpierre played well after replacing Moffitt in the first quarter, but this is bad news for the Seahawks.  Unlike fellow 2011 draft pick James Carpenter, who has struggled as the team's starting right tackle all season long, Moffitt had really come into his own and made right guard a position of strength for Seattle.  Here's hoping he can come back strong next season and continue his great development.

Doug Baldwin and Sidney Rice suffered concussions in similar circumstances; both were tackled and driven shoulder-and-head first into the turf.  Kam Chancellor also suffered a concussion, but his was self-inflicted.  Chancellor is a big hitter, but he has a bad habit of leading with his helmet on tackles and this time that really came back to bite him.  Here's hoping he learned his lesson this time, assuming he remembers anything about the tackle afterwards.  In all three cases, the players will have to pass a concussion test to be cleared to play in next week's game in St. Louis.

Two key backups on defense, DL Anthony Hargrove and S Atari Bigby, suffered hamstring injuries during the game and were unable to return.  Both have been previously listed as having hamstring injuries on the weekly injury reports, Hargrove prior to the Giants game in week five and Bigby leading up to the Bengals game in week eight, so it's likely that both players simply reaggravated the same injuries.

The Seahawks win!  Oh man, does it ever feel good to be saying that!  The defense did its job today, and the offense was able to get things done against a high-caliber defense.  Tarvaris Jackson completed 63% of his passes and made smart decisions with the football, and his performance was made possible by some great pass blocking by the o-line despite losing RG John Moffitt to a first quarter injury.  They also looked great in their run blocking, springing Lynch for over 100 yards' worth of tough, bulldozing runs. 

Yes, penalties are still a major concern, and we're still waiting to hear about the severity of the injuries suffered by Moffitt, Sidney Rice, and Kam Chancellor, but THE SEAHAWKS WIN!!!

The Seahawks always have a chance to win when they're playing on their home turf with the 12th Man at full volume, but the Ravens are not an easy team to beat.  Baltimore's defense is its usual tough self this year, and this game could get rough in a hurry if the Hawks let themselves get bottled up on offense. 

Thankfully, there's some good news, too.  The Ravens' are much less formidable on the other side of the ball (25th in yards per rushing attempt, 24th in yards per passing attempt, 28th in completion percentage), and if the Hawks pull out a win today it'll most likely be because the defense was able to keep Joe Flacco and Ray Rice under wraps long enough for Tarvaris Jackson and company to figure out how to cut down on the penalties and score some points.

SEA! HAWKS!

I'm pretty sure this isn't news to anyone, but penalties have been killing the Seahawks.  False starts, neutral zone infractions, defensive pass interference, unnecessary roughness -- you name it, the Seahawks have been penalized for it.  According to Pete Carroll and others, the reason for the increase in penalties this season is the team's youth and lack of experience.  As explanations go, this one has the benefit of sounding like a reasonable, valid answer.  It just seems logical that inexperienced players would make more mistakes, which in turn would lead to more penalties being assessed.

But do the stats bear that out?  Is there an inverse relationship between a team's experience and the number of penalties they commit, or is there an explanation that better fits the data?  To find out, I started off by looking at stats for the last ten full NFL seasons, 2001 - 2010, although I ended up ignoring 2010 after I discovered some errors in Pro Football Reference's numbers for that season.  Not that it really mattered, because after a week's worth of crunching numbers I'm left with very little of substance to show for all my work.

What I can tell you is that there does not appear to be any significant correlation between the number of penalties a team incurs and the average number of years of NFL experience for each player on the team.  The same goes for the average age of the players, who the head coach was (which is good news for Carroll), the team's win-loss record, or the number of rookies in the starting lineup.  Looking at average years of NFL experience for just the starters on each team was slightly more promising¹.  More experienced starting lineups appeared to get penalized less often than younger ones, but not consistently enough to definitely point to experience as a significant factor.  In short, I've got nothin'.

So as far as I can tell, it may sound reasonable to guess that there's a connection between the experience level of a team and the number of penalties the players rack up, but the stats do not seem to back up that assumption.  It's entirely possible that I simply didn't examine a wide enough range of seasons for a pattern to emerge, but just examining '01 through '09 involved working out averages for 280+ starting lineups, and as it turns out that's pretty much the limit of how much of this sort of thing I'm willing to do in my spare time.  If anyone else decides they want to go to the trouble of taking a more in-depth look at the data available, more power to you -- I'd love to know what you discover, if anything -- but I think I've had enough of sifting through penalty stats for awhile.

¹ I included every player who started for at least 6 games, i.e. over 1/3 of the regular season.

Louis Bacigalupi posts comments on Seahawk Addicts under the name LouieLouie.  He's an accountant by trade and worked in a USFL front office.  He can be reached by email at Louie@fiercelyi.com.

The Hawks went in to the 2011 season committed to making major changes at quarterback.  We all know what a giant figure Matt Hasselbeck will be in Seahawks history.  He was Holmgren's guy, the team's franchise quarterback for the better part of a decade.  He took the Hawks places they hadn't been before.  Along with Holmgren, he was the dominant personality of the Seattle Seahawks.  Football fans all over the country knew Hasselbeck.  He was the guy who uttered those immortal words, "We want the ball and we're going to score."

However, his reign in Seattle was at an end and Pete Carroll and John Schneider knew it.  In fact, they did Hasselbeck a favor by allowing him to move on.  How long would he have been able to stand the pounding that Tarvaris Jackson has already taken behind this young o-line? Not very long -- he'd probably already be in traction by now.  The move gave Hasselbeck an opportunity to enjoy success in Tennessee, along with a better chance of retiring as a functioning quarterback rather than as a surgery patient.  Also, he will be a mentor to a kid from Seattle, Jake Locker.  Hasselbeck is appreciated in Tennessee, but would have been booed in Seattle.

Matt's departure does leave one unanswered question: what the bleep do we do now at quarterback?

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