Brady Henderson, ESPN 6y

Why Pete Carroll takes responsibility for Doug Baldwin's sideline outburst

Pete Carroll wasn't OK with how Doug Baldwin handled himself Sunday when the wide receiver shoved offensive line coach Tom Cable during a heated moment on the Seattle Seahawks' sideline. Carroll said as much right after his team's 24-7 win against the New York Giants and again on Monday.

But Carroll understands why it happened, and that he ultimately bears some of the responsibility.

"This is an emotional team, and we've seen that over the years," Carroll said. "I think that I probably stoked that as much as anybody, so I'm the one at fault, sometimes putting us at our wit's end. But we've got to learn how to operate like that because sometimes that's just where you go."

Where Baldwin went was over an emotional line that several other Seahawks have gone before him. Frustrated with the way Seattle's offense couldn't get out of its own way against the Giants, Baldwin wanted a message of accountability delivered, and he wanted quarterback Russell Wilson to deliver it. As Cable addressed several offensive players while they huddled around him on the sideline, Baldwin was yelling in Wilson's direction. That's when he gave Cable a brief, one-handed shove.

"I lost my cool," Baldwin said afterward. "It's 100 percent my fault."

In that moment, yes. But in a bigger-picture sense, it was a product of the environment that Carroll has fostered.

It has long been Carroll's belief that the best way to get the most out of players is to let them be themselves. It's why, for instance, Marshawn Lynch was allowed to march entirely to the beat of his own drum for six seasons in Seattle and, more recently, why Michael Bennett had Carroll's full support when he decided to sit during the national anthem, even though the coach believes every player should stand.

Carroll doesn't discourage players from expressing themselves, whether it's their beliefs off the field or their emotions on it. He pushes them to take their emotions to the limit, knowing they'll sometimes end up on the wrong side of it.

That happened more times than Carroll would have liked last season, most notably with cornerback Richard Sherman. He had a pair of sideline blowups directed toward coaches, but he wasn't the only one who lost his cool. Defensive linemen Frank Clark and Jarran Reed briefly went at it on the sideline during one game. Bennett fought with offensive linemen Germain Ifedi and Bradley Sowell several times during training camp.

Not that it was just a 2016 issue. Recall Sherman's famous postgame interview with Erin Andrews and Baldwin's rant toward reporters right after the NFC Championship Game the following season. Two weeks later, Bennett and Bruce Irvin scuffled with Patriots players as New England was running off the final seconds of its Super Bowl XLIX victory.

"These guys know how I am about it. I expect them to operate at a high-pitched level of emotion and expect them to be able to function like that," Carroll said. "Numerous times, numerous times over the time we've been together, we talked about, 'yeah, sometimes there's that line and you can cross it or you can be poised and not cross it,' and when somebody does lose it or go across it, the next one needs to take care of them right there. That's about rule No. 1 of the program, about protecting the team, and if you're going to ask your guys to go that far, sometimes they're going to cross and we have to understand that.

"That’s why there is some understanding and we work with it and we try to help our guys grow to become comfortable at almost a frenzy pace at times and frenetic mentality."

Asked about Baldwin's incident from Sunday night, Sherman said "it comes with the territory," noting the Seahawks' environment and how Baldwin is fiery by nature. Sherman knows that as well as anyone. He and Baldwin are best friends from their days together at Stanford.

"I've been seeing him do it since he was a freshman in college," Sherman said. "It's been 10 years, 12 years, something like that. And it's always gotten the point across. You can ask David Shaw about that one day, about his freshman year. It's a long story, but yeah, he's been doing it a while. It works out, man. That's how he plays."

And Carroll doesn't try to change it.

"Like I've said, it's my fault. I'm the one that orchestrates that, but I am OK about it because I think we can manage it -- no, I don't think we can. We have managed it," he said. "But at times, we've got to reel somebody back in and our guys understand that. You will see other guys will jump to the opportunity. I mean, look at last year. There's a great illustration; you couldn't see it more clearly."

Carroll was referring to what happened after the first of Sherman's two sideline episodes, when he got into a shouting match with defensive coordinator Kris Richard. As Sherman was still simmering, several defensive players surrounded him and started bouncing up and down, trying to get his focus back on football before the next series began.

"Sometimes that's fun for us to push the limits," Carroll said. "We're trying to get there and trying to see how far we can take it and still function at an extremely high level."

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