Pete Carroll vows to open up the playbook for Geno Smith

The Seattle Seahawks have scored no points on offense over the last six quarters of play, and understandably fans are worried.

Geno Smith’s completion percentage stands an impressive 81%, but the ball has seldom been pushed down the field and his air yards per completion stands at a paltry 4.6, which is near the bottom of the NFL but surprisingly ahead of Aaron Rodgers and Kyler Murray. Under Russell Wilson, the Seahawks thrived off of explosive pass plays and rode the arm of one of the most accurate and prolific deep ball passers in the league. Geno hasn’t really pushed the ball down the field, and this offense has conclusively shown regardless of who’s under center that it just cannot function without being able to get chunk plays.

But have no fear! Perhaps the first two weeks were more like an extension of preseason, and that the playbook is about to open up. Here’s what Pete Carroll had to say on Monday to 710 Seattle Sports.

“We don’t need to hold him back at all. I think Geno’s got his game ready to go,” he said of his quarterback. “We need to trust him and we need to maybe give him a few more opportunities and stuff. We’ve been pretty solidly conservative, counting on running the football, and when we didn’t run the football then OK, we didn’t have much of a mix that we needed. We can do better with that. And whether that’s right or wrong, that’s not the point. The point is that we need to keep expanding. We have too many explosive avenues to go to and we’ve got to make sure that these guys show up.”

As far as opening up the offense, one glaring statistic is DK Metcalf’s yardage. Having failed to reach 1,000 yards last season and posting career lows in yards before contact and average depth of target, Metcalf has just 71 yards on 11 catches. A remarkable 52-yard grab on Sunday was nixed because of an Abe Lucas penalty, while a potential touchdown throw to him in the end zone was uh... thrown by DeeJay Dallas to the other team.

“Just got to make sure that the ball is going to DK down the field. We gave him a shot and he makes a great play. We’ve got to make sure that the tight ends are involved and getting the ball more. We know that they can play and we love the heck out of them, we’ve just got to make sure that that’s more of the attack,” Carroll said. “We have it, it just hasn’t really shown up.”

It’s a point of emphasis for Carroll that they make the most out of their team speed at the wide receiver position.

“We need to make sure that we’re using all of the speed that we have. Marquise (Goodwin) is going to be a factor for us. We’ve got to get him involved in the game to threaten the entire field,” Carroll said. “There’s just things that we can do. We’ve got to come at it and get after it better than we did, and that’s just the way we do it.”

Hard to ignore that he made no mention of Dee Eskridge in that segment.

The Falcons defense in theory should be a step or two down from the Broncos and 49ers, so we’ll see if Carroll is true to his word and that they can trust Geno Smith to at least try and push the ball more. A low-risk offense has so far been a low points offense.