Patrick Kerney Color Rush Jersey , his time in college at Southern California or his first eight seasons in charge in Seattle, Pete Carroll has never started a season with three consecutive losses.That’s 12 seasons in the pros and nine in college during which Carroll has been able to avoid a disastrous start to a new campaign. And it’s what the Seahawks will be trying to avoid Sunday when they host the Dallas Cowboys.“There’s only a couple of undefeated teams in the NFC right now and let’s hang with that. Let’s hang with them,” Carroll said. “I don’t want to get behind that number right now, so we’ve got to get a win.”What’s been called a roster reset multiple times by Carroll and other Seahawks has struggled to get started. Seattle’s offense has looked inept at times, its quarterback confused and its defense vulnerable. The Seahawks understand the rarity of dropping to 0-3 and still being able to turn around the trajectory of the season.“I’m not going to give you a cliche. You don’t want to be 0-3,” Seattle linebacker Bobby Wagner said.Dallas is still trying to solve all of its issues, but at least has a victory after knocking off the New York Giants at home last week. The Cowboys’ defense was exceptional against the Giants, holding rookie Saquon Barkley and New York’s run game to 35 yards on the ground, and sacked quarterback Eli Manning six times. The Cowboys are second in the NFL with nine sacks through two weeks, and now face the offense that’s surrendered a league-high 12 sacks so far, six in each game.“We’ve continued to try to build the talent level on our front seven and try to create competitive situations where guys are fighting for roster spots and fighting for playing time and hopefully when they get out there that competition brings out the best in them,” Dallas coach Jason Garrett said. “Obviously, those can be very impactful plays.”The Cowboys are 5-2 in September road games since 2014, one of those losses coming in the opener against Carolina. Seattle hasn’t lost a home game in September under Carroll, going 13-0 since 2010.RUN AROUND: For two weeks, the Seahawks have failed to follow through on one of their major offseason priorities of returning to being a run-first offense. The Seahawks had just 16 carries for 64 yards in the opener. After committing to running more in Week 2, they ended up managing only 74 yards on 22 carries against the Bears. There was also Carroll’s confusion about the conditioning of starter Chris Carson, who didn’t have a carry in the second half against the Bears.SILENT ON SEATTLE: New Dallas secondary coach and passing game coordinator Kris Richard turned down interview requests before his reunion with the Seahawks. Richard spent the first eight years of his pro coaching career in Seattle, the past two as defensive coordinator. He was fired in a retooling of Carroll’s defensive staff.The Cowboys have blitzed more the first two weeks than in the past under defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli. From the start, Richard has said the Cowboys embraced the idea of him bringing new concepts.“I do think the DNA of both guys in terms of what they believe in coaching is real similar,” Garrett said. “I think that reflects on how they teach technique and the schemes that we use.”WIN SOME, LOSE SOME: Seattle is expected to get Wagner (groin), rookie starting cornerback Tre Flowers (hamstring) and guard D.J. Fluker (hamstring) back after missing time with injuries. Wagner and Flowers missed the loss to Chicago Germain Ifedi Color Rush Jersey , while Fluker has been out since the third week of the preseason with the hamstring problem.While those players appear set to return, the Seahawks could be without starting center Justin Britt (shoulder), while linebacker K.J. Wright (knee surgery) and wide receiver Doug Baldwin (knee) are still at least a week away from getting back on the field.WEAKNESS IN NUMBERS? The Cowboys are using 11 roster spots — roughly 20 percent of the 53 total — on receivers and tight ends. They added a receiver without releasing one this week by bringing back Brice Butler. He spent the past three seasons with Dallas before signing with Arizona in free agency. The Cardinals cut him at the end of the preseason.The Cowboys are 30th in the NFL in passing in their first season without tight end Jason Witten and 2014 All-Pro receiver Dez Bryant. Dak Prescott has thrown for at least 200 yards just twice in the past 10 games going back to last season.LOCKER ROOM VISIT: Garrett said it was a little strange when Seattle safety Earl Thomas approached him in the Dallas locker room following the Seahawks’ victory last December . During his offseason holdout, Thomas made it clear he wouldn’t mind the opportunity to play elsewhere, with Dallas possibly at the top of his wish list.“I’ve never had that happen before, an opposing player comes into your locker room. But we have great respect for him,” Garrett said. Ever since his arrival in the Pacific Northwest as the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks back in 2010 Pete Carroll has sought to find a big-bodied receiving target. From Big Mike Williams to Sidney Rice to Chris Matthews, Jimmy Graham, David Moore and Brandon Marshall, the Hawks have seemed to attempt to find a tall receiver who could represent a dominant mismatch in the red zone. For the 2018 season it seemed that the Hawks had found their replacement for Graham in Marshall, a player whose height and experience should allow for the creation of mismatches in the red zone. However, Marshall ended up being more of a nightmare for the Seattle offense than for opposing defenses. Marshall appeared in just seven games and played only 191 offensive snaps on the season, with more than two thirds (133 of 191, 69.63%) of those snaps coming during the first three weeks of the season. Unfortunately for Seahawks fans, those 133 snaps may have cost the Hawks a game. Seattle traveled to the Mile High City to take on the Denver Broncos in the season opener, a game which they lost by just three points. That game ended in a three point loss for the Hawks, however, there was a four point swing early in the second quarter when an offensive pass interference call on Marshall cost the Seahawks a touchdown and forced them to settle for a field goal. In Week 2 Marshall managed to drop a pass on 2nd & 6 that hit him right in the chest, and while it is obviously impossible to place blame for a loss on a first quarter incompletion, it started a streak of three straight games in which a Marshall drop led to a punt. Following that streak of the drops, he was shown to the bench, and played only 34 more offensive snaps for Seattle before being released. So, while many fans may argue that the difference for the offense after the team started 0-2 was a shift to a more run oriented offense Marshawn Lynch Color Rush Jersey , how much credit goes to the fact that the team moved away from the receiver who couldn’t catch? As the team gets ready for its Week 17 matchup against the Arizona Cardinals, Marshall still leads the team with 3 drops on the season, in spite of the fact that he is fifth on the team in snaps and fourth on the team in targets among wide receivers. And that’s in spite of the fact that he hasn’t played for the team in two months because they released him in October. So, while all the attention has been going to the reemphasized running game and the fact that the Seahawks have rarely turned the ball over, how much of the credit should be given to a group of wide receivers that simply doesn’t drop the ball? Yes, David Moore could work on getting his feet down on end zone and sideline routes and Doug Baldwin has battled injuries for most of the season, but the simple fact of the matter is that those two, along with Tyler Lockett and Jaron Brown, have been absolutely phenomenal this season. Those four have combined for a catch rate of 69.3% this season, in spite of more than a quarter of their targets coming on deeper passes. At the same time they have dropped less than 1% of their targets, while Marshall’s drop rate was in double digits. So, the question then becomes, does the team need a big bodied receiver? Sure, it’s a nice luxury to have if the player performs at an acceptable level and does their job, but that is certainly not what Marshall did. Thus, with the regular season coming to a close this weekend and the offseason quickly approaching, the question becomes whether the Hawks will go after another big bodied receiver in the offseason simply because of physique. Seattle has both Malik Turner and Caleb Scott on the practice squad, as well as the smaller Keenan Reynolds, making receiver a position that will be extremely interesting to watch during the offseason. But talk of the offseason is getting ahead of things, because first we’ve got the playoffs to enjoy.