Carroll’s game approach has worked well for Seahawks

RENTON — Asked earlier in the week why his team excels in prime time, Pete Carroll couldn’t give a succinct answer.

Between saying, “I don’t know” three times, Seattle’s head coach mentioned how his team works hard to not letting big moments change who the Seahawks are or how they go about their business. However, the fact that Seattle is now 12-1 in primetime games under Carroll is a topic he always tries to downplay.

A day later, safety Earl Thomas — a player about whom Carroll said in August, “I watch this game and live this game through his eyes often” (in other words, those two have a special connection and see eye-to-eye on a lot of things) — nailed it when asked about his team’s success in primetime.

“I just found out it was a Sunday Night game,” Thomas said with a straight face. “I was thinking it was a regular game.”

When the Seahawks play Arizona Sunday night, it will be about as big of a regular-season game as two teams can have.

If the Cardinals can pull out a victory despite playing with their third-string quarterback, they’ll not just win the division, but have home-field advantage through the playoffs, giving them a real chance to play a Super Bowl in their home stadium. If the Seahawks win, they’ll put themselves in first place, and with a Week 17 victory at home against St. Louis, give themselves a first-round bye and perhaps home-field advantage depending on how things shake out with a few other teams.

Yet for all that is at stake, the Seahawks’ ability to spend all week not thinking about what’s at stake, or even that the game is on Sunday Night Football, is a big reason why they’ve been so good on the biggest stages.

And yes, Carroll’s “every week is a championship week” mantra is incredibly cliche, but here’s the thing: it also has worked incredibly well for the Seahawks. Shrewd talent acquisition and the coaching staff’s ability to develop that talent is the biggest reason that the Seahawks are the defending champions and likely heading back to the playoffs. But all that stuff Carroll preaches that seems so cheesy also has played a big role not just in the Seahawks’ success, but their remarkable consistency. Most seasons, even the best teams in the NFL lay an egg from time to time and get blown out, but the Seahawks haven’t lost a game by double digits since midway through the 2011 season.

“As we mature, you start to think different,” Thomas said. “You don’t think like the young guys think. You don’t fall into those traps, because you fell into them before; you can’t do the same thing again. We’ve learned from our mistakes.”

As Thomas notes, it took players maturing and learning from early slipups to get to this point. It’s one thing for Carroll to preach a “treat every game the same” approach, but it’s something entirely different for his players to actually buy in. Players who were rookies under Carroll have since admitted they thought he was a bit nuts when they got here and he told the team that even preseason games mattered, then later stressed that playing a winless team midseason was just as big as playing a division rival with a division title at stake. Eventually, however, they understood what he was asking from them.

Even the veteran players who came from other teams required a bit of an adjustment.

“That’s one thing I had to learn here,” defensive end Cliff Avril said. “Coming here, Coach Carroll from preseason all the way out, he treats every game like a championship game, and when you first get here, you’re like, ‘How do you do that? What do you mean?’ But once you get into it and you understand what he’s trying to say, he’s just basically saying, ‘treat every game the same. Don’t try to do too much, do your job, and everything else will work itself out.’

“So every game this season has felt the same because of our approach. We don’t change how we’re going to practice, how we’re going to prepare each week due to who you’re playing or when you’re playing; every game’s the same. That’s an awesome approach.”

Avril said it took him until midway through last season to really get what Carroll was asking of them, while Michael Bennett, who like Avril signed as a free agent before the 2013 season, said it was the loss in Indianapolis that helped him and others figure it out. Richard Sherman was at the end of his second season when it fully clicked for him and several of the young players, who after a sluggish start realized that a playoff game, for all the hype, was still a football game.

“We were down, it was a big road game, about as far as you can go across the country,” Sherman said. “It was another one of those opportunities. We were down early on, we weren’t playing very well in the first half, and we were able to overcome that, come back, win the game, play extremely well in the second half, and just kind of prove to ourselves that it really makes no difference. The field’s the same size, the goal posts are the same height; nothing’s really different.”

Yet Seattle’s way of doing things, as well as it has worked, isn’t the only way to approach a game. Plenty of teams over the years have found success getting hyped up for big games, and the Cardinals, who are big underdogs despite being 11-3 and unbeaten at home, are embracing the big-game hype. Bruce Arians, a favorite for coach of the year honors, is all for his players using a potential division title as motivation against the Seahawks.

“Yeah, man, you don’t get to play for the damn thing very often,” Arians said. “It’s not like Seattle’s played for it for a hundred damn years. I’m sure they’re embracing it also. You fight your (rear) off all year to get to this game and sure you embrace it, but you don’t change how you prepare for it, it’s still the same process.”

The way the Seahawks approach each week isn’t necessarily the only way to do things. Clearly what Arians and the Cardinals have a very good thing going. But when it comes to the Seahawks and their clichéd “every week is a championship week” approach, it’s hard to argue with the results.

Herald Columnist John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com