Pete Carroll confident in Josh Gordon

This coming week’s Monday Night Football game will see the Seahawks up against the San Francisco 49ers in a battle between the two top NFC West teams.

“I’m not thinking about not winning now — I’m thinking that we’re going to do it, we’re going to find a way, we’re going to make the right decisions,” Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson on the weekly Pete Carroll Show.

For the Seahawks, it will be the first game with new acquisition Josh Gordon, a New England Patriots wide receiver up until last week.

“He comes with high praise now for his ability and talent and natural skills and all that. Just in our first look yesterday and then again today, you can see that he’s really got a lot of ability,” Carroll said on Friday. “And he’s very comfortable with the game, he learns very well, it’s all pretty smooth — there are no rough edges here.”

Pete Carroll reflects on first half of 2019 season

Josh Gordon and substance abuse

Carroll is not sure yet if Gordon will play in this game, and said he likely won’t know until Monday comes around.

“We’ll go all the way to the end of the preparation, take it all the way til Monday and we’ll figure out what’s best for us, but it’s a really good first impression he made,” he said. “And I think our fans will be excited to see him play, see what he can contribute.”

Gordon has a bit of a rocky history in the NFL. He was suspended from 10 games in the 2014 season and from the entire 2015 season due to substance abuse. He spent the 2016 season in a rehabilitation facility, and missed portions of the 2017 and 2018 seasons. He has stated in interviews that he first became hooked on drugs and alcohol in middle school.

However, Carroll believes in second chances and applaud’s Gordon’s efforts in recent years to turn his life around and get clean.

“[Seahawks general manager] John [Schneider] and I go heart-to-heart on these kinds of decisions, and we rely on one another to talk it through, and do our homework and our research and use really good information … we make a decision and go from our gut, really, when it comes down to it,” he said. “If we fill ourselves up with the right information and we look each other in the eye and we talk about what it means and what we’re doing, we generally make pretty good choices that we feel good about.”

Listen to the Pete Carroll Show on Fridays at 12:30 p.m. during the Dori Monson Show on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. 

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