The Seattle Seahawks suffered a home loss on Sunday at the hands of the Dallas Cowboys - an almost completely unheard of phenomenon in recent years - leaving fans and players alike to shake their heads, wring their hands and mutter in frustration.
One player in particular, however, the aptly nicknamed "Angry" Doug Baldwin, was not muttering his frustrations after the game; he was venting them rather forcefully.
"We've got too much (expletive) talent over here not to be moving the ball. It's not on Russ, I'm just saying in general, our offense, we're just too (expletive) good not to be moving the ball down the field," Baldwin said in the post-game locker room.
That's two (expletive) expletives for all you kids counting at home.
Baldwin did not back down from those comments a few days later.
"We've got to play better," Baldwin told reporters Wednesday. "The guys on this team, we've always had chips on our shoulders, for whatever reason. It just kind of refocuses us and lets us know that we are not as good as we think we are, and we are not as good as everyone thinks on the outside that we are. We've got to go back to work and remember that chip on our shoulder and get back to the grind."
Baldwin was held to only two catches for 32 yards against Dallas. He did manage to block a punt on special teams that was then returned by linebacker Michael Morgan for a touchdown in the first quarter, but at one point in the second half, cameras caught Baldwin yelling at quarterback Russell Wilson on the sidelines.
"I wasn't yelling at Russell," Baldwin said. "I was voicing frustration as a whole with the offense. I told him we are too good for this, that we should be putting up 40 points, that we have too much talent to not be going out there and not playing the way we are capable of."
Wilson played maybe his worst game as a pro, finishing 14-of-28 for 141 yards, no touchdowns, and one interception, good for a 47.6 rating. But the Seahawks still led for much of the game, and had ample opportunity to escape with the victory.
"I think that's what I was more frustrated about, that even in the Washington game, even though everybody said how well we played, we really played like crap, actually," Baldwin said. "So it kind of frustrated me that we didn't improve. ... The way that we played last week in the Dallas game was very disappointing because I felt like we didn't grow."
Baldwin claimed that his comments are merely reflective of his personality, his love for the team and his desire to see them come out victorious.
"They know I'm going to speak my mind," he said. "And for the most part they know I'm going to be wise with my words. But at the end of the day, I think that if you know me, you know that I do things on purpose. So I felt like it needed to be said."
