Pete Carroll Cannot Believe The Chargers Kept Kicking To Leon Washington

Every morning, the fine folks at Sports Radio Interviews sift through the a.m. drive-time chatter to bring you the best interviews with coaches, players, and personalities across the sports landscape. Today: perfectly adequate NFL coach Pete Carroll.

Carroll joined Brock and Salk on ESPN 710 in Seattle to talk about the roller coaster of emotions during the game against San Diego, the Seahawks' ability to force turnovers, and Leon Washington's playmaking ability.

On the game against San Diego: It was pretty wild. We needed everything in all directions to come through with the turnovers and the kicking game and stuff. That is a really good team. And it took all of that to beat them. I thought (Philip) Rivers was tremendous again. We were thinking that going in. We really went after him. We went after him with everything, knowing that that is what we had seen would disrupt him. He still was going to make some good plays, but he was going to make some bad plays. We got enough to hang on and eek out a win. We were just able to hang on.

On the Seahawks' ability to force turnovers: There was three great turnovers in this game. All the fumbles were all caused by getting after the guy and doing something to get the ball out. I cannot tell you how much we emphasize that. We're never happy with it, although that was a great day to knock three balls on the ground. And the two interceptions were great too. That was a great pick by Earl (Thomas). He made a great catch on one and a great break on that last one. All of them were great. We emphasize it as much as we can possibly think of it. I mentioned yesterday, our philosophy is all about the ball. That means that our offense is trying to take care of it forever and our defense every single snap is trying to take it away… That's when we play the game we are trying to play. I know we gave up a lot of yards, but it's hard to win when you give up the football.

On if he was surprised that San Diego kept kicking to Leon Washington: Well I guess they are trying to be tough minded about it. After the one he slipped, that may have been the indicator, because he almost broke it again. And they did it again. They've had their troubles. It was a fantastic job by our guys during the week. They saw that they were vulnerable there and called it to a T what was going to happen and how we were going to attack them… He has done this before. He said, ‘This is what I do,' after the first one. Then he did it again… We really hoped that he would be a special player in some dimension… I was standing next to (Special Teams coach) Brian (Schneider) when Leon caught the ball one and he said, ‘We got them.' As soon as he caught the ball, we could see that we had the crease we needed.

This post, written by Paul Bessire, appears courtesy of Sports Radio Interviews. For the complete highlights of the interview, as well as audio, click here.

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