For three straight weeks, Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch has sat out practice on Wednesday and Thursday to rest various ailments before returning to action on Friday. That is potentially concerning for a team that has to play a Thursday game this week, but Pete Carroll says Lynch should be fine this week, even if he’s going to have to be game ready on a day he hasn’t been practicing of late.
“We’re just going to go through the process and see how he does, see if he’s OK,” Carroll said. “That’s how we do it. We take good care of him, and he’s really smart about how he handles it. We’ll expect that he’ll be ready to go, and I know he won’t want to miss thing and he’ll be ready to play.”
Lynch, who has a history with back problems, has been on the injury report with back, calf and rib injuries in the past few weeks, but Carroll said this year isn’t much different than past seasons when Lynch has been held out of practice at times to minimize the wear and tear on his body.
“This is how he’s endured the season, basically,” Carroll said. “… He’s played great, he’s just played great football, and he’s been able to respond every week. For any player, this is a challenge to get back Thursday, this is a huge physical challenge for these guys to come back Thursday night. There’s a benefit on the other end of it that we’ll try to cash in on, but he should be OK.”
With a short week, the Seahawks are fortunate to have come out of Sunday’s game in pretty good health. Carroll said tight end Cooper Helfet was “the one guy who came out banged up, he sprained his ankle. Coop’s handled stuff really well, we’ll see what that means, but right now he won’t be able to run around until the end of the week. We’ll see what happens.”
It sounds like guard James Carpenter, who has missed three games with an ankle injury, has a good chance to get back this week after he nearly convinced coaches and trainers to let him play Sunday.
“As close as you can get,” Carroll said. “We labored over whether to go with him or not… He was really politicking to get out there and play. But we just thought if he did, with a short week coming up, we wouldn’t get him to respond, he was that close and still would have results from this game, so we decided to hold him out and give him the best chance to be ready for this games and the ones after that.”
With Carpenter and Max Unger out, and facing a very good defense, the Seahawks pass protection was kind of a mess, allowing seven sacks. As you might suspect, Carroll said that a lot went wrong for his team to give up seven sacks.
“Oh gosh, this was a different game,” he said. “We got sacked seven times in this game, we had all kinds of problems. We got beat one on one, we had some scheme issues, we held the ball too long—to have that kind of onslaught, it took a lot of stuff. (Arizona) is a really, really difficult defense and they play good football. They cause d a lot of problems, but they didn’t break us. We hung in there, the coaches stayed with it in the plan, and Russell stayed true, did a great job of maintaining his poise, and we found our way, we found a way to move the ball.”
Carroll wouldn’t say if Patrick Lewis will remain the starter at center if Lemuel Jeanpierre, who re-signed last week, would take over the job: “We’ll find out. We’ll let these guys battle again this week.”
Cornerback Marcus Burley, “has a chance to get back,” Carroll said, after missing Sunday’s game with a hamstring injury.
The news is less encouraging for rookie linebacker Kevin Pierre-Louis, who hurt his shoulder against Kansas City.
“He’s banged up pretty good,” Carroll said. “… He won’t be able to make it this week, and more news to come.
Asked if that meant Pierre-Louis was heading to injured reserve, Carroll said, “Don’t know yet. Working on it.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
