Dave Boling: Pete Carroll won’t take home Coach of the Year, but winning eight games deserves recognition

SEATTLE – Getting to eight wins and being included in legitimate postseason calculus would have seemed like a delusional Seahawks fantasy at almost any point this season.

But the 23-6 destruction of the New York Jets put them that improbable position.

How in the world did this happen? How did a team considered an absolute bottom-feeder in the preseason come to this?

Maybe it’s fair that when trying to affix credit for absurdly positive results, we should go to the same place the blame for losing gets heaped.

Pete Carroll?

Yeah. Here’s why: The play Sunday so perfectly followed the Carroll blueprint for winning games in the NFL. Run the ball effectively. Stop the run defensively. Win the turnover battle.

With the win, Carroll tied former Washington coach Joe Gibbs for 16th place on the NFL’s all-time winningest coach list with 171 wins. That’s legitimate company, and it elevates Carroll’s career to a point of discussion this week.

Carroll has taken the Seahawks to two Super Bowls, nine playoffs and five division championships in 12 previous seasons.

But here’s the point to make in light of Sunday’s win: Getting this young, reworked roster even near the middle of the NFL pack might stand as one of the best coaching efforts of Carroll’s career.

Winning championships with a star-laden defense and Marshawn Lynch carrying the ball may be less impressive than finding ways to be moderately competitive with six rookies playing key roles and a castaway quarterback working to revive his career.

The Seahawks have played like a young team this season. Very inconsistently. They’ve gotten lucky to face some backup quarterbacks, and lost to some bad teams along the way. In fact, they recently went through a stretch of losing five of six games.

At that point, the Seahawks very easily could have gone belly up. A young team, especially. Instead, even diminished by a number of injuries, they played one of their best games for this win. Have to think that Carroll’s unrelentingly positive approach helped keep their heads in the game.

I occasionally get emails complaining about Carroll. It’s all fair. His results are undebatable, but the means to the end is fair to question. Particularly common is the theory that, at 71, his approach seems a little arcane.

His live, in-game decisions are often worth questioning, as are most coaches’.

If nothing else, the notion that his style was holding quarterback Russell Wilson short of his full potential has been convincingly debunked by Wilson’s decline in Denver.

When his teams are filled with veterans, who have memorized the best of his motivational repertoire, you will hear occasional grumbling from the old guys.

This, too, might be a part of why Carroll seems so engaged this season: He’s at his best with a young team – like his Seahawks were when building toward their Super Bowls. Young Seahawks are still a lot like college guys, the kind of players Carroll coached for years at USC.

This team is full of guys like that. Next year’s will be too.

A huge factor in the win Sunday was one of those young guys, who is a perfect fit for Carroll’s approach – running back Kenneth Walker III. Walker put together his fourth 100-plus-yard rushing game (23-133 yards).

Walker was considered questionable with an ankle injury, but his performance was unquestionably a preview of potential greatness. He opened the game going 60 yards on his first carry.

There were a number of other carries that were gasp-evoking. Several times he turned a clogged line into a big gain with moves called “jump cuts.” It involves the capacity to move laterally as quickly as forward. To defenders it has to appear as if he dematerializes and teleports to an opening five yards down the line.

Walker is perfect to play Carroll scheme. It’s also the kind of play that translates well in the postseason.

It’s worth remembering that the Jets had lost four in a row, so a win was not unexpected. But the Seahawks’ proficiency in all three phases of the game made it seem as if a playoff appearance wouldn’t be the result of fluky good fortune.

Beat the Rams in the final game and hope Detroit beats Green Bay, and the Seahawks are in the postseason.

Carroll won’t earn any Coach of the Year votes, but getting 8 or 9 wins this season still deserves commendation.