Seriously, if I was a Seattle fan I would be shouting for Schottenheimer to get fired. That was PATHETIC. He let Dallas win with his pathetic RUN-RUN-PASS playcalling. You have Russell Wilson FFS. Give him the ball and throw it deep. Dallas' strength is how good they are against the run while they're a poor pass defense, yet this idiot kept running the ball.
I think this has much more to do with Carroll than Schottenheimer. He's the one who wants to stick with the running game at all costs. This approach worked over the most of the last 14 games of the regular season, it didn't this time. It hurts to lose against a team that's on my top 5 most hated (mainly because of the mediots like Skipp Bayles) list but while always trying to be optimistic I've never believed we had a team (specifically OL and the defense) to make a deep playoff run this year so I have overcome this loss quickly. And I would rather lose the way we lost 1000 times over that heartbreaking loss from the Bears last night.
I think game plan was too conservative from the start of the game and PC trusted his defense too much instead of believing in Wilson more. Anyway, we were still in a position to win the game and I think we would win if not for some individual mistakes from the defense and costly penalties in the last quarter. We also have to give a credit to the Cowboys defense. Kris Richard knows us well as our former DC and this played a big part in their success IMO.
I'm still happy with our season in general as I was expecting 5-7 wins at most in a rebuilding year and think Shotty did a good job overall so he should (and will) stay. We still have some pretty big holes (or at least question marks) on the roster which we should address in the offseason.
We only have 4 draft picks (though I expect us to trade back so we'll likely end with 6) so we'll probably need to spend something in free agency. We have around 60M of cap space but we need to extend Frank Clark and have to make a decision about K.J. Wright. He had injury problems this season but is still a good player when healthy but is he still worth $8M+/year (and he could probably get even more in free agency)? I don't think so but we'll see how Carroll and GM John Schneider will decide.
While I like some of our younger defensive linemen this is a great DL class so we need to use that to further improve the DL. I would also like to draft a longterm Earl Thomas replacement - though players like him (when in his prime) are almost impossible to find - because having that type of safety is crucial to Carroll's defense.
On the offense our main goal again should be continue to improve the OL. They were a much improved unit from the last year but still not good enough especially in pass protection and both guards (J.R. Sweezy and D.J. Fluker) are free agents. They both had injury problems but I'd like to bring them both back on a team-friendly contracts. And I think we should draft a bigger WR to pair with Baldwin and Lockett. David Moore as our tallest WR has shown some progress this year but he was a 7th rounder for a reason.
And last but not least, find a young reliable kicker. Their importance is growing from year to year.
