Previews: The 49ers Uncovers unusual Strategy to Upsets Seahawks’ in 2nd Matchup

 

The Seattle Seahawks have a chance to avenge one of their most recent losses this weekend.

On Thanksgiving, the Hawks hosted division rival San Francisco, and the 49ers jumped out to a big lead early and wound up thumping Seattle 31-13.

The two teams face off again this weekend, and the Seahawks are in the midst of a three-game losing streak while the 49ers are winners of four straight since their bye week. The Hawks are 6-6 while the 49ers are 9-3 and atop the NFC West.

Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll shared his thoughts on the matchup during The Pete Carroll Preview on KIRO Newsradio 97.3 FM Friday morning.

“The last time you played the 49ers, of course, was on that short week. And you said that as a team, you didn’t do as good a job in preparation as you had hoped you would,” Steve Raible said to Carroll. “So how is this second go around different, aside from the amount of time you have? How well has preparation gone? And how important is it for not just you and the coaches, but for the veterans on this team to also put that message out about here’s what it takes to get ready for one of these games?”

Carroll said things are “so different” this time around.

“The timeframe is so different and we have historically always taken care of the players with the thought first that we’re going to make sure that their legs are as fresh as you can make them on a short week. We’re not in that situation. We’re back to our routine,” Carroll said. “We prepared really well for the Dallas game, and we played well against Dallas on both sides of the football did a lot of good things and played really hard for 60 minutes and were in it all the way until the last play.

With a little bit of a break, now we come back again and recapture the mentality and the effort and kind of the whole aspect of practice in a full week. We’re ready to go. We should be in good shape for it.”

The 49ers have a very dangerous offense and its one that put up 31 points on the Seahawks two games ago. Carroll thinks there were positives on that side of the ball that could carry over this week.

“In the second half of that game, we felt like we kind of regained our stride a little bit and played head to head. We scored 10 and they scored seven in the second half,” he said. “So we’re kind of taking that with us that we know that we can match up well enough to have a shot at playing really good football against these guys. But we’ve got to make sure that with the threats that they have, we’ve got to keep them under wraps.”

A big focus is preventing explosive plays.

“We’ve got to stay on top of everything. We’ve got to make sure we corral the runs and do a really good job in leveraging the perimeter game that they have, and just keep the big plays from happening and make them have to work for it,” Carroll said. “And if we do that, then we’ll give ourselves a chance to be in this football game and get a chance to go get it.”

On the other side of the ball, the 49ers have a defense loaded with big names, especially on the defensive line and at linebacker.

“They’ve played pretty straight up front. They’re an over team and they line up pretty much in the same looks and most of the time they mix three basic coverages against us,” Carroll said. “It’s not the scheme as much as it is the players, and they really cut it loose. They have a tremendous amount of experience in the defense,s o they get really fast execution out of their linebackers and their second-level guys.

Meanwhile the guys up front are roaring off the football all the time it’s designed for them to attack the line of scrimmage and try to get on the edges and create problems with their pass rush and the penetration that they can get, and then let the linebackers clean it up after that. It’s very similar to how we’ve played over the years.”

“They’re really, really good, so you have to out-execute these guys, but you’ve also got to not get knocked around,” Carroll later added. “We’ve got to be physical with the football, we’ve got to make sure that we can run the ball so that we can do the things we want to do in the passing game.”