Pete Carroll: Wasn’t ‘football people’ who decided his fate

SEATTLE – Pete Carroll's 14 years as coach of the Seattle Seahawks ended Wednesday when team owner Jody Allen announced he would become an advisor to the organization, but not before Carroll is beaten fiercely to keep his job.

The challenge in making his case for ownership, according to Carroll, was that “they're not football people.

Carroll shared details of his end-of-season meetings with Allen when he appeared on Seattle Sports 710-AM for the final episode of his weekly radio show. He said the first goal is to get to the bottom of what happened last season as the Seahawks finished 9-8 and missed the playoffs for the second time in three years.

“And then, OK, what is the essence of the necessary adjustments?” Carroll said in a conversation broadcast Friday. “That's where we might disagree, because I see things a certain way and I think I have a way to solve this problem and I'm not going to solve it half-heartedly ;I'm trying to fix it so it's perfect. I have very precise and specific thoughts and they may not see if that way, they may not agree with it, they may not not see that it's the right answer or that it's not the answer that makes them feel good “What's difficult is if you could know, it's really difficult because they're not not football people. They're not coaches, and so getting into the real details is really difficult for others. “

It is not clear who, other than Allen and Carroll, participated in these end-of-season meetings, although Bert Kolde was the vice president of the Seahawks under Allen, who took over the team after the death of his brother, Paul Allen, in October 2018.

When asked if he thought the meetings would go the way they did, Carroll said he knew he would be challenged.

“Every year it feels like you're going to be challenged by opinions that are sort of media opinions, because what else do people have when you're outside of the game?” he said. “How could you know anything other than what you talk about on the radio, what the articles say and what the experts draw conclusions about? That's why you have to realize that this is what you are dealing with and then trying to talk. to get to the heart of things. It's always going to be a challenge because when you don't have genuine, legitimate football people calling the shots, then you have to try to make sense of it, just like we're trying to make sense of to your audience, this is no different.”

General manager John Schneider is leading the search to replace Carroll, who is the winningest coach in franchise history and the only one to lead the Seahawks to a Super Bowl title. Including the playoffs, his 181 wins are tied for 13th in NFL history.

Carroll said he received hundreds of text messages and phone calls following Wednesday's news, with sources ranging from Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells to political commentator Rachel Maddow.

“I can’t catch up on everything, but I’m working on it,” he said. “It’s really nice, flattering and warm to feel that there are so many responses.”

Carroll said during his farewell news conference Wednesday that details of his advisory role had not yet been discussed. He also made it clear that at 72 years old, he still believes he has what it takes to coach, a point he reiterated on his radio show when asked if he saw himself coaching again.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I have a lot of energy, thought and will for this, but I can't imagine that there is one place, the right one. I don't know. I'm open to everything, but I don't hold back my breath. “There are a lot of people here that I’m eager to challenge and pursue. So if it happens, it will happen. We will see. I really don't know what to tell you about this yet. “