Frank Clark continued his sack rampage against the Chargers. In a contract year, the Seahawks' leading pass rusher continues to show why it's important that the Seahawks retain him.
Frank Clark earned a sack for the third consecutive game on Sunday in Seattle’s defeat to the Los Angeles Chargers.
In a contract year, the 6-foot-3, 265-pound defensive end has racked up 7.5 sacks in the Seahawks’ eight games.
But on a day when the Seahawks finished with just two sacks, and Clark managed just one tackle, the fourth-year pro’s contributions weren’t enough.
And Clark certainly didn’t sound satisfied with his production.
“What I tell my young guys is, ‘Keep on pushing. Keep on going. Don’t let your technique fall apart. Don’t let your practice habits fall apart,’” Clark said, with an ice pack wrapped around his left shoulder. “It should inspire you to want to get better when you lose. It should inspire you to want to do more, to want to make more plays.
“I want to make more plays. One sack is not enough. I want to get two, three, four if I have to, for this team to win. At the end of the day I know I can do that. I feel like, us as a group, we just have to do better. It’s simple.”
That’s also what the statistics say, as the Seahawks rank 18th in the NFL with 21 sacks this season. Besides Clark and defensive tackle Jarran Reed (five sacks), no other Seahawk has more than two.
“We’ve just got to do a better job,” Clark said. “I just feel like our D-line, we’ve got to rush better, like I’ve been saying for the weeks when we haven’t. It’s just a persistent effort to want to get better.
“You can’t lapse because you’re winning. You can’t sit back and feel like we’ve got the whole world in our hands. We’ve got a lot to prove. We’re a young team. We’re climbing. We’ve just got to keep on going up.”
Of course you try the onside kick there
The way Pete Carroll explained it, the Seahawks really didn’t have a difficult decision to make on what to do next after they scored late in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s defeat to cut the Chargers’ lead to 25-17 with 1:50 left.
Seattle followed with an onside kick that the Chargers recovered at the 47.
To Carroll, the chances of potentially getting the kick outweighed any loss in yards.
“We were going to have to stop them anyway,’’ Carroll said. “So we wanted to see if we could have a chance at the football right there.’’
The Seahawks held the Chargers on three plays, using all three of their time outs, with a sack on third down by Jarran Reed forcing Los Angeles to punt from its own 40.
Seattle then took over at its own 22 with 1:24 left for its final drive of the game.
“The defense did a perfect job of taking the ball off of them,’’ Carroll said. “In three plays it took 18 seconds or whatever the heck it took. It was a perfect job of getting the ball off them with three timeouts.’’
Overall Seattle got the better of the Chargers in the special teams department all day.
Punter Michael Dickson averaged 52.8 yards on six punts with a net of 50. The Chargers starting their six drives following Seattle punts from their own 17, 24, 35, 15, 5 and 6.
“Mike did a great job today, he really did,’’ Carroll said. “The field position was really huge for us, particularly in the second half we were able to take advantage of it. He’s a real weapon and he showed it again.’’