Pete Carroll turns 70 ‘grateful’ for Seahawks opportunity, hopeful nation is about to turn
Two trays of cookies were at the front of the Seahawks’ main team-meeting auditorium.
“Pete didn’t eat the cookies they made for his birthday,” All-Pro linebacker and team co-captain Bobby Wagner said.
“Guess he wants to stay healthy.”
Health and vibrancy are two things Carroll absolutely got for his 70th birthday Wednesday.
As his team began practice for Sunday’s home opener in Carroll’s 12th season leading it, Carroll was clapping his hands and pumping his fist to James Brown music bumping from the speakers across the practice field. He was wearing his usual sunglasses, khakis, a white, long-sleeve Seahawks shirt and his favorite, white Nike Air Monarch sneakers.
Carroll stopped to joke with All-Pro safety Jamal Adams during stretching. He checked in with new cornerback Sidney Jones. He ran from one side of the field to the other, to follow the defense to their daily, rousing bag drill that begins every practice.
As usual, he didn’t look 70.
The oldest coach in the NFL didn’t sound 70, either.
“It’s not very often you have a press conference on your birthday, you know,” Carroll said.
“How’s it feel? I feel great. I feel GREAT.
“But what I really feel is grateful.”
The hip, national-champion USC coach that owner Paul Allen sent then-team CEO Tod Leiweke to Los Angeles to hire in January 2010 wasn’t supposed to last long with the Seahawks. Certainly not this long.
Carroll lasted but one year as the head coach of the New York Jets (1994) and three with the New England Patriots (1997-99) in his first NFL go-round.
His rah-rah, players-first, music-blaring, Snoop-Dogg-on-the-sidelines ways weren’t supposed to work in the pro game.
“Yeah, I mean, it took me a while to realize he was the oldest coach in the league,” Wagner said.
His many critics said Carroll’s SC ways would get stale in the NFL. A team’s best players stay longer than the four or five years, while the best college team’s players stay under one coach before graduating or going pro.
What Carroll’s done in Seattle is reinvent the franchise. He’s led the Seahawks to eight playoff appearances in nine seasons, the team’s only Super Bowl championship and the best run of success in the Seahawks’ 46-year history. His 123-71-1 record, including playoffs, is the best for any Seattle coach. By far. Mike Holmgren was 90-80. Chuck Knox was 83-67.
What Carroll’s also reinvented in Seattle is himself.
It’s gone far beyond football, way beyond where the native of Marin County, California, who began coaching when Richard Nixon was president, has ever gone before with his players.
“From the moment I got here, in 2012, he was always a players coach. He was always a person that wanted to see you do well in life,” Wagner said.
“And I think probably after year five or six, was kind of a big shift, too. Even for him. Normally for college, it’s four years and guys move it. At that point (here), we are still there. So there had to be a shift in his mind, where we weren’t moving on. ...
“I remember him calling a lot of us up, and talking about things outside of football, and opening up his journey and what got him to this point. He wanted to push us to think about what life looks life after football.
“I always respected him for that. Because most coaches don’t do that. Most coaches don’t promote you trying to figure out what you want to do in life after a profession that you are supposed to be focusing on.”
Those outside the locker room and team facility don’t see Carroll’s last two seasons as his best ones. They see the Seahawks losing in the divisional round of the NFC playoffs the last two Janauarys. They see it’s been six years, since Seattle’s last Super Bowl, that the team hasn’t advanced beyond round two of the postseason. Those outside judge him by that.
But for those inside — who listen to astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, psychologist Dr. Angela Duckworth about grit, basketball legend Bill Russell about race and life, to name a few guests Carroll has brought in to talk to his Seahawks players — these last two seasons have been his best.
They’ve been his most complete. He’s been guiding, leading and listening his Seahawks amid our nation’s social-justice uprisings and the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020’s training camps and early in the season, more players around the league were testing positive for the coronavirus. Some coaches tried to lock down players from seeing anyone, or they weren’t effective in tracking where players went, for the team’s safety.
Carroll? He basically struck a deal with his Seahawks. It was a deal that without their trust would never have worked as splendidly as it did.
Players were OK’d to have girlfriends, parents, siblings, cousins, grandparents, buddies, anyone from anywhere, visit them during the 2020 season, on one condition: The players had to tell the team every visitor who was coming, plus when and how long they were staying. Carroll arranged for those registered visitors to get the same, rapid-results COVID-19 testing at team headquarters upon their arrival in the Seattle area as the players got each day from July into January last year.
The Seahawks were the only NFL team without a confirmed COVID-19 case in 2020.
This spring into summer, when COVID vaccines became widely available in the U.S., Carroll had vaccination events set up for players, their family members and their friends at Seahawks headquarters.
All but one of 91 players were vaccinated to begin Seattle’s training camp. That 99% vaccination rate was 23 points higher than that of King County, where the Seahawks train and play — and more than 50 percentage points higher than the home states (such as Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi) where many Seahawks players spent their offseasons.
Sunday’s game is the first time the Seahawks have played the Titans since September 2017 in Nashville, Tennessee. Carroll devoted the night before that game to the players’ anger at President Donald Trump, saying any NFL player who doesn’t stand for the national anthem was a “son of a b***h” and should be expelled from the league.
Carroll led a frank player discussion in the team hotel in Nashville. The Seahawks decided to not take the field for the anthem before the next day’s game against the Titans. The Titans followed the Seahawks’ lead.
The Seahawks played one of their poorest, most lifeless games under Carroll in losing that day at Tennessee.
Carroll said Wednesday he’d do that weekend all again, the same way. The time and need was that extraordinary for his players beyond football.
In the summer of 2020, Carroll canceled a practice during training camp so the players who weren’t registered to vote in the November presidential election could get registered — right there on the side of the Seahawks’ practice field.
Carroll and general manager John Schneider joined former Seahawks K.J. Wright, Kam Chancellor and their wives and others in a “call to action” march across Lake Washington and the Interstate 90 floating bridge for social justice. The coach canceled game-planning Zoom meetings all the 2020 offseason and devoted those calls instead to having frank talks among players about the killings of George Floyd and other Blacks by police and others across America.
“With everything — with COVID, and social change — he’s always been out front,” Wagner said. “He’s always been a person who’s wanted to learn and put himself out there in uncomfortable situations.
“I respect him a lot for that.”
Carroll said of all he’s accomplished in his nearly 50 years coaching — from being a graduate assistant at Pacific, where he played defensive back, to now four wins from tying Bill Cowher for 19th place on the NFL’s all-time wins list for coaches with 161 — what he’s led his players through off the field the last two years gives him pride.
“Yeah, I am proud, to be part of it,” he said. “It’s a part of the whole movement that we’ve put in motion here. The way everyone has worked together to do the right thing, bust through all of the challenges of the opinions from the outside and how ‘you should.’ We dug in and did the way we knew how to do it.
“I’m proud of that.
“But there’s a lot more to do. We are just getting started. There a lot of people who need us. I’m hoping we can reach out and help them.”
Carroll used one word to describe how he felt turning 70.
“I’m grateful,” he said. “I’m really grateful and appreciate where we are right now.
“I’m grateful for working for this franchise, for the Allen family and their support. The fans that we love to deal with. I mean, everything about all that we are doing here is as good as I could hope.
“I’m lucky to have been found here. ...This is an amazing place to work and represent, and very grateful for it.”
The always-sunny Carroll turned 70 saying he’s brokenhearted by where the country is — but buoyed about where it’s headed.
“My heart is broken, in so many ways, about what’s going on around us,” he said. “There’s so much discontent with the way things are going.
“But...I think it’s turning. As hard as times have been and as difficult as it’s been, we’ve exposed so much hardship and really, just discontent and all, I think it’s ready to go. I think it’s ready to turn. I don’t think we need to go any lower to get going again. And I am thrilled to be here in this situation to watch it happen, contribute to it, and hopefully help our guys that they can help in their areas of influence to do good stuff.
“What’s going to turn us in a better way is, we are going to love the people around us better than we do, and we are going to appreciate the people who are different than us better than we do.
“I think it’s coming. I mean, it couldn’t get any darker in having people griping at each other and all the discomfort that we feel. But, yet, there are more people that want to do good stuff ...
“I don’t think there are enough people to bring us down. We are going to outlast them.
“I’m saying this because I’m older than anybody. So, I get to say what I want to say.”
He laughed.
“Really, we have a lot of good things to do right now. And there a lot of good people that are fighting their ass off to make good things happen. And there are people who are fighting against it.
“I think if we keep good thought and a good hope and we really look after the people around us then we are going to do good stuff.”
This story was originally published September 15, 2021 at 4:17 PM.
