Pete Carroll makes it clear: He fought to remain the Seahawks’ coach. Jody Allen said no
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Seahawks’ Pete Carroll Era Ends
After 14 seasons of the most sustained success in Seahawks history, with a legacy of his players loving him and his unorthodox, personal approach, Pete Carroll is out as Seattle’s coach.
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The setting was all Pete Carroll.
Seventies funk music blaring through the packed main auditorium of Seahawks headquarters. The 72-year-old coach bounding up the steps of the stage. Bounding past the regulation basketball hoop he had bolted into that stage when he became the team’s coach from USC 14 years ago, to have offensive players compete against defensive players in shooting contests at team meetings.
In the same room two days earlier he spoke passionately — the only way he spoke to his players — about how and where he was intending to lead them through next season. He told them how he intended to be the franchise’s coach and top, final football authority for the 15th consecutive year.
The sudden ending Wednesday?
That was not at all Pete Carroll.
He made it clear: This was not a mutual decision. Seahawks team chair Jody Allen told him after the 14 years the best Seahawks coach ever was no longer the man who would lead the franchise.
Carroll said that in his goodbye press conference Wednesday afternoon.
“I competed pretty hard to be the coach,” he said.
The timeline of Pete Carroll’s end
Sunday, following the team’s season-ending win at Arizona but elimination from the playoffs for only the third time in 12 years, Carroll said he wanted to return to lead the Seahawks for the 2024 season. He also said three days ago he expected to return next season, “at this time.”
Monday, he met with his players as a team for what became the final time. He shared heart-felt feelings. He did so thinking he was returning to be their coach next season.
Then he met with Allen. It was their usual end-of-season assessment of the team’s football operations and where he wanted to go next.
That’s when Carroll found out where he wanted to go next was not where Allen and Bert Kolde, her right-hand man with Vulcan, Inc., the team’s operating company, wanted Carroll to go.
Allen acted knowing the NFL coaching carousel has started turning in the three days since the regular season ended. She knows once it starts, it goes fast.
Put another way: Jim Harbaugh won’t be in contract limbo with college national champion Michigan and former Seahawks Super Bowl-winning assistant Dan Quinn won’t be the Dallas Cowboys’ successful defensive coordinator forever.
Kolde had been sitting silently six feet in front of Carroll Sunday at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, when Carroll said he wanted and expected to remain the team’s coach for next season.
Publicly, Allen let Carroll exit his way.
Carroll spoke inside a main auditorium packed with quarterback Geno Smith, fellow captains Bobby Wagner and Quandre Diggs, assistants and staffers. He was in the room in which he’s held thousands of team meetings the last 14 years.
“First, I’ve shared my feelings about our team, about the organization and representing the 12s, and my intention of staying with the Hawks, man,” Carroll said. “That was true to the bone.
“I want to make sure that’s clear, as things have shifted so quickly,” Carroll said.
“Following our season-ending meetings in planning, and with ownership, it’s clear that — and for a variety of reasons — we have mutually agreed to set a new course, for the club to take on new leadership. That’s just a decision that’s been made. ...
“For all my guys,” Carroll said, turning to his left to look at quarterback Geno Smith and Seahawks co-captain Bobby Wagner sitting in the first and second row of the auditorium’s seats, “I think you know, probably, how much I competed and for our perspective and our standpoint...I freakin’ didn’t back off for an instant.”
Then, Carroll said: “I competed pretty hard to be the coach. Just so you know.”
Allen issued a statement through the team Wednesday morning to announce the change of the man her brother, late Seahawks owner Paul Allen, hired away in January 2010 from the dynasty he rebuilt at USC. Jody Allen’s statement said: “After thoughtful meetings and careful consideration for the best interest of the franchise, we have amicably agreed with Pete Carroll that his role will evolve from Head Coach to remain with the organization as an advisor.”
Carroll didn’t know what that meant as of Wednesday. And he didn’t seem all that eager to find out.
“We’re going to figure that out,” he said. “We don’t really know that right now.”
He also intimated he may not be done coaching, and said with certainty that he’s not just going to ride waves off his north-shore home in Hawaii with his wife Glena, about whom he spoke lovingly amid tears Wednesday.
Carroll’s Seahawks contract from which he just got fired was through the 2024 season with an option to coach through 2025.
“I’m supposed to go lay on a cot somewhere,” the NFL’s oldest coach until Wednesday said.
“That ain’t happening.”
Asked twice what the differences were between his vision for the team and Allen’s, Carroll said he was not detailing that. Not publicly, anyway.
He did say this about the Seahawks middling at 9-8 each of the last two seasons, with their defense among the league’s worst both years despite massive changes in scheme and philosophy on that side of the ball: “We lost our edge, really, the edge to be great, running the football and playing defense.”
Carroll and, ultimately, Allen, know the Seahawks aren’t getting anywhere they want to be — home playoff games, the inside track back to the Super Bowl — if they can’t win the NFC West. Despite Carroll remaking the Seahawks’ defensive scheme and players the last 11 months, the team remains so behind San Francisco along the line of scrimmage inside the division. The 49ers’ dominance over Seattle’s defensive front and offensive line in five consecutive Niners wins over the Seahawks was damning to Allen’s view of the team’s present, and future.
Still, Carroll’s history and legacy are indisputable.
He went 137-89-1 in the regular season and 10-9 in 19 postseason games as the Seahawks’ coach and top, final football authority from 2010-23. That’s the most coaching wins and best winning percentage (.606) in franchise history. The Seahawks had a winning record in 11 of his 14 seasons.
The franchise has had eight coaches in its 48 seasons of NFL football. Carroll has 35% of the Seahawks’ victories all time.
Seattle has won 11 division titles in its history. Carroll won five of those 11, the most of any Seahawks coach.
“We weren’t anything. And then we were something,” Carroll said. “We made something special.’‘
He leaves the Seahawks as the only coach to win a Super Bowl and a college national championship in the 26-year Bowl Championship Series/College Football Playoff era.
Allen’s decision to fire Carroll means she believes it’s time for John Schneider to be the Seahawks’ top football authority. Schneider is the first-time general manager Carroll hired in 2010 to be below him in football authority in Seattle.
Carroll said Wednesday Paul Allen and his then-Seahawks CEO Tod Leiweke asked him, Carroll, 14 years ago if he wanted to be the team’s GM as well as its coach. That what Mike Holmgren was from 1999-2002 when the Seahawks got the coach who’d won the Super Bowl in Green Bay to come to Seattle to coach.
Carroll said no, then hired Schneider from the Packers’ personnel department.
Schneider will now hire the next Seahawks coach, for the first time.
Schneider, 52, has a contract with Allen and the Seahawks that runs through the 2026 NFL draft.
Russell Wilson lauds Pete Carroll
Around the league, reaction was glowing.
Russell Wilson, the quarterback Carroll drafted in 2012 when others in the NFL thought he was too short then turned into a Super Bowl champion for Seattle, posted on social media — and alluded to Carroll possibly coaching again: “One of the Greatest Ever. ‘Keep Shooting’ Coach. Grateful for the memories. @PeteCarroll Best is Ahead.”
Even a division rival honored him.
In Los Angeles, Rams coach Sean McVay said of Carroll, per Greg Beacham of the Associated Press in L.A.: “What a great coach. What an amazing leader of people. The ultimate competitor. ...
“Man, did his teams have an identity. Coach Carroll is a stud. If I’m sitting up here being able to do that as long as he did, holy s*** will that be impressive.”
Nick Saban, the legendary coach at Alabama, announced he was retiring to make Wednesday a head-spinning day in coaching news.
Former Washington head coach Steve Sarkisian, also a USC assistant under Carroll and Alabama assistant under Saban, called Carroll and Saban “The 2 GOATs” on his social-media account.
Richard Sherman, the former Stanford wide receiver Carroll drafted in the fifth round in 2011 and made an All-Pro Seahawks cornerback, Super Bowl champion and superstar, said he was “very surprised” his former team fired Carroll.
“I did not see this coming. I did not see them letting Pete go,” Sherman said on his The Richard Sherman Podcast Wednesday. “He’s one of the only coaches in the history of football, in general, to win a national championship in college and win a Super Bowl.
“I think he’s the greatest Seahawks coach of all time, and that’s not to be debated at this point. ...
“I expected them to let Pete coach as long as he wanted to.”
That was what most who have been around Carroll’s tenure in Seattle thought.
Allen thought otherwise.
Pete Carroll bounds out
Carroll was asked: If the Chicago Bears had beaten Green Bay Sunday to sneak the Seahawks into the playoffs for the 10th time in 12 years, instead of the Bears losing to the Packers to eliminate Seattle, would this be happening?
“Not today,” he said.
He laughed.
Everyone in the packed auditorium laughed.
Then they applauded as the coach who prioritized personal relationships high-fived the people he walked by on his way out of the auditorium.
And out of Seahawks history.
This story was originally published January 10, 2024 at 3:38 PM.
