Pete Carroll: Seahawks have no choice but to kick to Devin Hester

Every week, every coach of every team getting ready to face the Bears faces the same question: Will you kick to Devin Hester?

Seahawks coach Pete Carroll got the question and said he doesn’t see what choice he has.

“We’ve got to kick the ball to him,” Carroll said on ESPN 1000. “There’s nothing we can do about it. We’d like to not [punt], though. That would help us.”

In other words, Carroll isn’t willing to just kick the ball out of bounds on every kickoff and hand the Bears the ball at the 40-yard line, so Hester is going to get the chance to return some kickoffs.

Not that Carroll is looking forward to seeing the ball in Hester’s hands.

“You have to be very disciplined about the way you play him,” Carroll said. “He’s just too good. And he’s so explosive. So we’re going to do a great job, I hope, of covering and placing the ball where we want to and doing all the things that you need to do so we can maximize our chance of slowing him down.”

"He's a great player that has done everything you can do," Carroll said of Hester. "We've got to respect that. We like our special-teams efforts. We know that our guys can play, and we're gonna do the best things we can do to deal with him [and] all of the impact he can bring to the game. So we're ready for it."

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(profootballtalk.com)