‘They’re not football people’ – Pete Carroll reflects on final meetings with Seahawks ownership

The final episode of The Pete Carroll Show had some interesting remarks from the former Seahawks head coach.

• By
  
  Mookie Alexander
  
• on January 13, 2024 2:15 pm

Former Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll had his final radio show with Brock Huard and Mike Salk on Seattle Sports 710. The conversation, which was recorded on Thursday and broadcast on Friday, included a bit more in-depth discussion on what led to ownership moving him into an advisory role.

The big headline-getting quote is his viewpoint of convincing ownership that he should stay on board as head coach. While he didn’t name team chairwoman Jody Allen or vice chair Bert Kolde directly, he indicated that it was hard for him to make the persuasive case to remain coach because he’s not dealing with “football people.”

Transcription via Seattle Sports:

“The first thing that we do is we go through the season and what happened and what took place, and what were the reasons why?” he said. “What could we have done better along the way, and what would be the choices to move ahead? Because you’re competing, you’re trying to figure it out. I have very, very strong feelings about what we did, and where we screwed it up and why we didn’t come through the way we wanted to and what we did well. So we just needed to touch on all of that, and the perception that the media has on the outside is not always accurate.”

Carroll said the “initial part” of those conversations is getting to “the essence” of why the season went the way it did.

“And then, OK, what is the essence of the adjustments that are necessary? And that’s where maybe we don’t see eye to eye on it,” Carroll said. “I see it one way and I think I’ve got a way to fix it, and I’m not going to kind of halfway fix it. I’m trying to fix it so it’s perfect. So I’ve got real precise and specific thoughts, and they may not see it that way. They may not agree with it, they may not see that that’s the right answer, or that’s not the answer that makes them feel good. The difficult part is if it’s really hard because they’re not football people. They’re not coaches. So to get to the real details of it, it’s really difficult for other people … That’s basically just common dynamics that you deal with.”

Despite the initial statement from Jody Allen that this was a mutual decision to move Carroll to a new position within the organization, it seems pretty clear (and unsurprising) that Carroll wanted to continue coaching. He said in his farewell press conference that he was “competing” to keep his job, so the elaboration on the meetings only further establishes his position.

“Because every year it feels like that, that you’re gonna be challenged and you’re challenged by opinions that are kind of media opinions, because what else do people have when you’re outside of the game?” he said. “How could you know other than what you guys talk about on the radio and what the articles say and what the pundits are drawing conclusions on? That’s why you have to go in realizing that that’s what you’re dealing with, and then try to talk through to get to the essence of stuff. That’s always going to be a challenge because when you don’t have legitimate, dyed in the wool football people calling the shots, then you have to try to make sense of it just like we try to make sense of it for your audience. It’s no different. And in these meetings, these are wide open now. There’s always some strategy going on with what we’re revealing and what we’re letting out, because we have to maintain our uniqueness and the qualities that keep us separate from other teams and people and stuff.”

No word yet on whether Field Gulls is included in the standard of “media opinions” here.

It’s hard not to editorialize this particular quote from Carroll: “I see it one way and I think I’ve got a way to fix it, and I’m not going to kind of halfway fix it. I’m trying to fix it so it’s perfect.”

You don’t need to be a “football person” to figure out that there have been numerous attempts to fix, say, the Seahawks defense. It has not worked out and indeed sharply deteriorated. Those issues will be scrutinized at the highest level when assessing a coach’s future. Unfortunately for Pete, it seems that he has run out of time on that front. In terms of ownership, almost every NFL owner is filled with “non-football people” who don’t know the game and the intricacies within the game, which I suspect Pete is aware of.

Watch the full video below.

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