Seahawks' Pete Carroll says critics need to give Earl Thomas some slack

SEATTLE — The Seahawks may be coming off a 20-17 win over the Arizona Cardinals, but the mood leaving Glendale is a somber one following injuries to safety Earl Thomas and tight end Will Dissly.

Head coach Pete Carroll joined Brock Huard and Mike Salk for his weekly Monday interview on 710 ESPN Seattle to recap Seattle’s road win and provide a few updates on those injuries.

“It was a really unfortunate, unfortunate occurrence for our guys,” Carroll said. “I’m sick about that.”

“Guys were looking after Earl and Diss,” he later added. “Taking care of them, helping them on the buses and off… everybody was all around those guys.”

You can listen to Carroll’s full interview with Huard and Salk in the audio clip embedded above. Here are a few highlights:

• On the tight end position following Dissly's patellar injury: "We're talking about it. I can't tell you exactly how it's going to go right now. We have a couple guys on the practice squad that have a done a nice job for us and been with us for a while. So we have some continuity in that regard. We've got to figure out which way to go and all that. But this is what Monday (and) Tuesday are all about right now, and we'll get at it by Wednesday."

• Is tight end Ed Dickson ready to return from the PUP list after two more weeks? "Yes. If all continues, he's doing great, he's in great shape right now. He could've come back a few weeks ago, so he's ready to go."

• On the third-and-1 call that ended with an incomplete pass, and why he didn't choose to continue with the run there: "I'm kicking myself. I would rather fail running it than fail throwing it in that situation. I didn't tell (offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer) and he had a thought that he was going to. It was a good thought, should've been wide open, should've been easy. But we didn't execute quite right."

• On the loss of Earl Thomas: "We'd made such a good turn in a good direction and then he has to deal with that. I really think that, I know there's been a lot of talk about it, people that are criticizing whatever happened don't understand. This was an earth shattering moment for a kid. He's trying to play this game he loves and all the sudden this happens again. He knew exactly what had happened to him. He went right to what it's going to take to get back… but he was very chilled about it on the field. He was an unbelievable stud about handling it. So give him a little slack. This is a very, very difficult moment that most people would never understand what this is about."

• Is the relationship between organization and player becoming more strained? "I think we've probably designed some boundaries in there that made it such. A few years ago I had put together something, really for anybody that wanted to listen on that end of it, about how I thought that we were missing the real key factor in the game, in the NFL, which was the players. The players are the guys that have made this league what it is. I know there are other ways to look at it, but without them and without their effort and their love for the game — way back when when they weren't getting paid much and they were working two or three jobs or whatever and playing the game — they got this thing in motion. And they pass it along year after year to the next generation of players. And I don't think that we recognize that. I don't think we understand that not only do we owe it to them while they're playing, but we owe it to them after they suffer the rigors of playing. To take care of them and look after them and hold them in a different light. I've spoken about this to the league at times. I just think it's a different way of looking at what's going on. And I think if we showed that respect for what they mean to this game in every way and forever — for as long as they live, because they have given themselves to a game that has taken a lot from them at times in their makeup and their physical nature after the game's over — that we should love them forever for what they've done. And I don't think that they feel that. I think this whole CBA thing has taken it to sides. It's kind of polarized, and it's made it look like a lot of things going on in our world right now. The partisanship and polarization and all that does not generate the true sense of how you can care for one another."

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