The duo remains intact: Seahawks extend contract of general manager John Schneider to 2027
John Schneider is back in lockstep with Pete Carroll leading the Seahawks.
Team chair Jody Allen announced Tuesday she extended Schneider’s contract to remain Seattle’s general manager through the 2027 draft.
In November, an NFL source confirmed to The News Tribune the Seahawks had extended Carroll’s contract to remain their coach through at least 2025.
So Carroll and Schneider will remain under contract together for some time to run the franchise they’ve led from January 2010 to the greatest run of sustained success in team history.
“I am pleased to announce that we have extended the contract of general manager John Schneider through the 2027 draft,” Allen said in a statement the Seahawks released Tuesday morning. “For the last decade, John and head coach Pete Carroll have formed a tremendous partnership, and the Seahawks have established a successful, unique and truly winning culture respected throughout sports. I know we are all excited to see that continue.”
The Seahawks this season made the playoffs for the ninth time in Carroll’s and Schneider’s 11 years together. This season was their fifth NFC West title.
This run has included back-to-back Super Bowls, including Seattle’s only NFL championship at the end of the 2013 season.
Seahawks vice chair Bert Kolde on Twitter called Schneider’s extension “super exciting news for all 12s.”
Extending both Carroll and Schneider shows the team’s ownership after Paul Allen’s death in 2018 wants stability. That ownership is led by his sister Jody and by Kolde, Paul Allen’s right-hand man. They see nothing wrong with status quo during this best run in team history, with playoffs appearances in eight of the last nine years.
They aren’t seeking change, and they don’t intend any for the next five years.
Schneider splashed into the NFL as a first-time GM with dreamlike drafts in his first years with Carroll running the Seahawks. The team drafted Earl Thomas, Russell Okung, Kam Chancellor, K.J. Wright, Bobby Wagner, Russell Wilson and Richard Sherman, among others, within Schneider’s first three drafts with Seattle.
That become the foundation for the consecutive Super Bowl teams.
Since then, his drafting success has regressed to the mean, the normal crap-shoot that the annual college talent grab is around the league. Schneider has become known around the league for bold moves to keep the Seahawks’ championship window pried open.
His latest: trading two first-round draft choices and veteran starter Bradley McDougald to the New York Jets in July to get All-Pro safety Jamal Adams, and trading in October for two-time Pro Bowl pass rusher Carlos Dunlap. Both players revived Seattle’s defense in 2020.
The Seahawks hired Carroll from USC to be its coach and executive vice president in January 2010. Weeks later, they hired Schneider from the Green Bay Packers’ personnel office to be a first-time general manager.
That’s worked out OK.
“I think it is the key relationship in this whole 10 years,” Carroll said last year.
“From the time he got back here, we made a commitment that we were going to help each other be the best we can possibly be. I said, ‘I’m going to try to make you the best general manager in professional sports, and I’ll do everything to support you and all that.’ ... We’re going to stay together. We’re going to figure it out. We’re going to work together.
“It’s been a blast,” Carroll said. “John’s been so much fun. John is so creative. He’s a real competitor. He loves to go for it. As you’ve seen over the years, we’ve taken those kinds of shots, and we’ve never backed off from that kind of thinking. The constant competitiveness about him has kept us in so many situations that just all of the sudden, they blossom into something good for us.”
This story was originally published January 12, 2021 at 12:32 PM.
