Mike Vrabel joins Seahawks’ list. How key is head-coaching experience to John Schneider?
Pete Carroll had tons of it. More than a quarter century of it, in fact.
And the Seahawks just sent Carroll away.
Mike Vrabel has it. He’s one of just three who do, among the nine men the Seahawks are known to be interested in interviewing.
So just how important is head-coaching experience to general manager John Schneider in his search for Carroll’s replacement as Seattle’s coach that began this week?
Do the Seahawks want a guy who’s done the job to do their job?
“It’s a balance. It’s definitely a balance,” Schneider said.
“Are you going to take a shot with somebody who has never been a head coach that hasn’t necessarily had those ups and downs when there’s some hard things to go through?”
The 72-year-old Carroll had 28 seasons of coaching experience: 18 in the NFL, 14 with the Seahawks and 10 at USC.
Six of the coaches Schneider is scheduling to interview to possibly replace Carroll have zero. They never been head coaches at any level. That’s Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, Texans offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik, Giants offensive coordinator Mike Kafka, Dolphins offensive coordinator Frank Smith, Raiders defensive coordinator Patrick Graham and Panthers defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero.
Johnson, Slowik and Kafka are half Carroll’s age.
“I think Pete alluded to that in his press conference the other day: It’s a hard job. You’re going to go through some pretty dark times,” Schneider said. “You’re going to go through some great times, too. The key is to stay right in the middle of that and not be on a roller coaster. And to know that when you win a game it doesn’t mean you have all the answers and you’re the best thing going, then, when you lose a game, you’re not the worst team in the National Football League and you don’t have any good players.
“So, the balance is to be right in the middle of that. There’s something to be said to that experience, absolutely. People going through tough times with the media, or just any other pressures.
“That’s a great philosophical head coaching-search question, for sure,” Schneider said.
Enter Mike Vrabel
Vrabel has balanced the emotions and requirements of being a head coach. The 48-year-old former NFL and Super Bowl-champion linebacker was the Tennessee Titans’ coach from 2018 until Jan. 9. The Titans fired him after they finished this past season 6-11, including a home loss to Seattle on Christmas Eve.
Vrabel is on the Seahawks’ list to talk to in their coaching search, ESPN reported Thursday.
Vrabel is The News Tribune’s odds-on favorite for Seattle’s job (at 3-1), in our list of known and expected candidates published this week.
“I think the best guy for that job, without any question, is Mike Vrabel,” longtime NFL journalist Peter King of NBC Sports said Thursday on The Dan Patrick Show. “Mike Vrabel will be perfect with a guy like John Schneider, because John Schneider is a really good personnel guy. He’ll find a quarterback (beyond 33-year-old incumbent Geno Smith) for Mike Vrabel.
“All Mike Vrabel has to do is go in and replicate the ‘Legion of Boom’ — and I’m exaggerating there. But Mike Vrabel is a really, really good defensive coach.”
Vrabel was reportedly in Los Angeles Thursday interviewing for the Chargers’ head job.
Seattle is one of seven teams in search of a new head coach.
Vrabel, Cowboys defensive coordinator Dan Quinn and Rams defensive coordinator Raheem Morris are the three known to be on the Seahawks’ want-to-talk-to list who have head-coaching experience.
Quinn, 53, was the Seahawks’ defensive coordinator for their back-to-back Super Bowl teams of the 2013 and ‘14 seasons. Atlanta then took him away to be a first-time head coach of the Falcons for six seasons.
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Morris, 47, was the head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 2009-11.
Seahawks: More than a head coach
A new head coach brings with him his own offensive and defensive coordinators, and many of his own position coaches.
Schneider is going to have to approve those, too.
The Seahawks GM made a point this week of saying he is now in charge of the entire coaching staff; Carroll had final say over that the last 14 years in Seattle.
So Schneider is pondering how to rebuild Seattle’s coaching staff with this new hire of a head man.
Does he want a head coach who has already done it, and likely would have offensive and defensive coordinators who haven’t been a head coach? Does he want an NFL coordinator to become first-time head coach who is likely to bring with him more experienced staff with him?
Schneider doesn’t want to hire a coach who brings in a new offensive and defensive coordinator, only to have one of those coordinators leave Seattle within a couple years for a head-coaching job.
“If you hire a defensive coach, and he hires a really good offensive coordinator, and then that offensive coordinator is going to leave the next year, then what kind of consistency are you going to have with the quarterback?” Schneider said.
He thought of the previous head-coaching hire he was most a part of, with the Packers as GM Ted Thompson’s top deputy in Green Bay in the 2000s. The Packers hired then-49ers offensive coordinator Mike McCarthy from San Francisco to be a first-time head coach in Green Bay before the 2006 season.
“If you go back and look at the San Francisco 49ers when we hired Coach McCarthy in Green Bay, they just drafted (then-49ers quarterback) Alex Smith and they had like three different offensive coordinators, so that got things a little bit wonky for his career early in the mix,” Schneider said.
“If you hire a great offensive coordinator or a guy that’s going to be a great play-caller, where is the strength as the defensive coordinator and what kind of consistency and philosophy, strategy is that guy going to have and how long is he going to be able to stick around, too?
“Staff development and procurement, I think that’s extremely important — regardless of it’s an offensive guy, defensive guy, or special teams guy (you hire as a head coach).”
This story was originally published January 18, 2024 at 1:56 PM.
