It’s a tradition in sports that when a team loses in agonizing fashion, everyone from the team’s fans to the media covering the team will blame the coaches. After all, the thought goes, the coaches are in charge of everything from playcalling to situational adjustments to motivation, so if things don’t go well, who else is really at fault beyond players making this or that mistake?

In truth, the answer to the question, “Why do teams lose?” is generally more holistic than that. Though coaches can be at fault, there are also breakdowns on the field that lead to little and big losses along the way. It’s actually pretty rare that a recurring schematic breakdown is the primary reason for a team’s demise in a game.

However, if you’re a Seahawks fan waking up on Sunday morning, and you’re still unhappy with offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer for his role in Seattle’s 24-22 loss to the Cowboys in Saturday night’s wild-card game, you’re onto something.

The Cowboys came into this game as one of the better gap-control teams against the run in the NFL. They were fifth in yards per carry allowed in the regular season, and Greg Cosell of ESPN’s NFL Matchup did a specific segment on the iconic Xs and Os show this week on why that works so well. One would assume that Schottenheimer and his staff would have this information as well. If they did, they certainly didn’t respond accordingly.

Quarterback Russell Wilson completed 18 of 27 passes for 233 yards, one touchdown and no interceptions. He was responsible for a host of great throws and big plays when he was allowed to shake the restrictive game plan, but that wasn’t often. Per NextGen Stats, Wilson completed five of eight passes over 15 yards in the air, and when he did throw deep, the Cowboys didn’t have much of an answer for it.

Alas, the big-play opportunities weren’t called very often, and the Seahawks paid for it. Per statistician Warren Sharp, Wilson averaged 8.3 yards per play on his 16 completions, while the Seahawks averaged 2.8 yards per carry on their 21 non-Wilson runs. And it was Seattle’s stubbornness to stick with the run in the face of Dallas’ defensive excellence that sank this team in the end.

Whether it was the gap control overall, or the decision to spy Wilson with hyper-athletic linebacker Jaylon Smith, the Cowboys were clearly focusing on Seattle’s run game, and that was their attitude throughout.

“We ran and hit,” Dallas end DeMarcus Lawrence said after the game, per the Cowboys’ media department. “You hit the will out of somebody, they ain’t gonna want to run no more. The first time we played them [in Week 3], I feel like [the Seahawks were] running the ball harder, faster and stronger. We were laying that wood today so hats off to the defense for coming to play.”

Clearly, the Cowboys were looking to avoid another embarrassment after the Seahawks ran 39 times for 113 yards and a touchdown in a 24-13 win. And just as clearly, Schottenheimer, and head coach Pete Carroll by proxy, refused to bend in the face of this defensive onslaught. An inexplicable decision given Wilson’s hot hand, and when you take the ball away from a quarterback having an MVP-level season just to establish your preferred offensive identity, the loss has to fall on your head. This time, the Seahawks ran 24 times for just 73 yards, 14 of those yards came from Wilson’s scrambles, and 28 more came on one run from rookie back Rashad Penny, who had just five snaps in the entire game.

“You can get started at any time,” Carroll said of his will to establish the run in this game, seemingly at any cost. “The crux of the matter was third down. You don’t get the third down conversions you don’t get your next shot to call all your stuff. The game plan gets left in the bag a little bit, so that’s just how it always has gone. We just had a hard time on third down. We were one-for-seven or something in the first half. You can’t tell how the game plan’s going to go.”

The Seahawks were 2-of-13 in the game when trying to convert on third down, and a lot of that had to do with a run-run-pass call series that continually put the offense in a hole before the snap was taken. Carroll’s right in saying that there’s no way to “call all your stuff” when you get stopped on third down, but in today’s NFL, if you’re calling play series as if it’s 1973, you’re placing your offense at a considerable handicap.

Receiver Tyler Lockett, who finished the 2018 regular season as one of the most remarkable players at his position in recent NFL history, was asked after the game if there should have been more of a focus on passing after the struggles on the ground.

“That’s not really my problem,” Lockett said. “I got out there and if they tell me to block, I’m going to block. If they tell me to catch the kickoff and run, I’m going to run. I’m going to control what I can control. It’s pointless for me to focus on anything else that’s out of my control. I don’t do any of that stuff. All I can do is go play. That’s exactly what I did. I tried to stay poised, stay true to my game. However I could be of help, that’s what I was going to do. I understood that there’s plays that are not for me and there’s plays that are for me. The plays that are for me, I’m going to go out there and make the best of it. If it doesn’t work out, I know that I did everything I could do to make that play.”

Good answer. Also, there should have been more plays for him. Lockett was targeted just six times in the entire game. He caught four of those passes… for 120 yards. Lockett and his cohort Doug Baldwin made life miserable for Dallas’ pass defense when they were given the opportunity, and it’s on Seattle’s coaching staff that they couldn’t set their “identity” aside in favor of cold, hard reality.

In any industry, the best leaders adjust and adapt to the prevailing truths. The Seahawks’ coaching staff refused to do this, and they paid with an abrupt end to their season. Now, the question is, will they be more adaptable in the 2019 season and beyond?

Based on Carroll’s postgame conclusion, it’s more likely to expect more of the same.

“Without having another six, eight, ten shots in the first half, I can’t tell you what would have happened, of course, but we were getting threes and fours [three- and four-yard gains] at best and nothing was popping, so it just wasn’t as good. The third downs weren’t where we wanted them to be and we just couldn’t get going. We just couldn’t get the rhythm of it. We kept battling and trying. We had ten carries in the first half and that’s not enough for us to know what’s going on and so we have to convert to get that done. Give them credit, they did a nice job.”

Seattle did indeed have just 10 rushing plays in the first half—for a total of 22 yards. Meanwhile, Wilson was busy completing seven of 11 passes for 97 yards.

When your opponent has your number and is insistent on taking away the one thing you want to do, you can either change things up to respond by attacking their weaknesses, or you can keep banging your head against the same wall. If you choose the latter, you get what the Seahawks got on Sunday night:

A loss that can only be pinned on coaches who should know better.