Pete Caroll's Postgame comments

[travisduncan]

Pete Caroll was more than pleased with the defensive execution Sunday against the 49ers. The special teams play he was not.

After the game, the coach didn't have much explanation about how and why Ted Ginn Jr. was able to blow the game wide open with two returns for touchdowns.

"This is an important message that this is the first game, and we made enough mistakes to give a football game away, and we did," Caroll explained.

"So there are some things we can fix and we get back to work and get going. We have a lot to work on and we're going to bounce right back."

As for Ted Ginn Jr.'s TDs:

"Teddy Ginn did his stuff. With total speed, which is the kind of player he is, he outran us and bounced right around them and we couldn't catch him. We were all fired up, maybe a little too aggressive and collapsed on him more than we need to do on a guy like him that bounces like he does."

"Honestly, we didn't think Teddy Ginn was going to play. He's got a real style about him and he didn't do much in the preseason and he got us by running around us."

"We might have overreacted a little bit by taking away the perimeter and he took it right down the gut."

"The punt return, I don't know. I don't know how that happened, we must have missed a couple of tackles in there somewhere. They were just so uncharacteristic with the way we play. We count on those guys to do a fantastic job which they did all last year."

On the pass protection and Tarvaris Jackson.

"He'll make plays if we give him an opportunity. We have to fight like crazy on the offensive line to make sure the leakage doesn't happen."

On half time adjustments:

"We went back to the plan we wanted to execute. We tried to tempo it up better and make positive plays in the passing game. We just played better."

On the effort on Special Teams:

"How can I think it was great? We had two kick returns for touchdowns. That's a bad game. We can't have a good effort when that happens."

"19-17 we're right there. All the way to that point we're ready to win that game. Then bang then goes the kick return and the other kick returns. Our breakdowns there just took the opportunity away from us, that's clear"

"I love the way we fought back. I loved the way we played defense today. The change we had to win the game, I don't care how we played in the first half, it's how you finish it."

"We had a chance to finish this game and we let it get away."