Pete Carroll: Wasn't 'football people' who decided his fate

[Mizak]

Carroll: Wasn't 'football people' who decided fate

Pete Carroll said in a radio interview that it wasn't "football people" who made the decision to end his 14-year run as Seahawks coach.

www.espn.com

"And then, OK, what is the essence of the adjustments that are necessary?" Carroll said in a conversation that aired Friday. "That's where maybe we don't see eye to eye on, because 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. I've got real precise and specific thoughts and they may not see if 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 you guys could know, it's really hard because they're not football people. They're not coaches, and so to get to the real details of it is really difficult for other people

Pete taking a shot at Jody and JS??? Seems passive aggressive.

 

[SeaMeat]

Are the grapes beginning to sour?

 

[Seahawk_Dan]

The only person that could’ve fired was Jody or a “non-football” person. Sounds bitter.

 

[MORGULON]

Carroll: Wasn't 'football people' who decided fate

Pete Carroll said in a radio interview that it wasn't "football people" who made the decision to end his 14-year run as Seahawks coach.

www.espn.com

"And then, OK, what is the essence of the adjustments that are necessary?" Carroll said in a conversation that aired Friday. "That's where maybe we don't see eye to eye on, because 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. I've got real precise and specific thoughts and they may not see if 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 you guys could know, it's really hard because they're not football people. They're not coaches, and so to get to the real details of it is really difficult for other people

Pete taking a shot at Jody and JS??? Seems passive aggressive.

I don't think it was a shot at Schneider.
John Schneider is football people.

I think it was at Judy and her people

 

[Torc]

The next paragraph is even more interesting:

"Every year it feels like that, that you're going to be 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 radios 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."

He seems to be saying that "whoever made the decision" weren't doing a knowledgeable assessment.

The implication that I'm getting from all of this is that Schneider may not have been involved in the decision. Or at least Pete believes that to be the case. Which is consistent with his last press conference and the support he was giving JS but not consistent with the reports that the search for his replacement started a couple of months ago.

 

[Jerhawk]

Well, that's tough coach. You've had YEARS to fix it.

You're a defensive coach and your defense finished near bottom the last two seasons. Why weren't these adjustments already made?

Sounds like sour excuses.

 

[AROS]

There's no doubt in my mind, not even one smidge of doubt, that he is referring to Jody and her people.

And I 100% agree with him.

I'm not saying it wasn't the right choice, I do still think it was the right decision and his time had come but Pete is dead on here. He was trying to get Jody and her team to grasp the concepts that only someone like Pete with his eons of coaching experience would understand from a pure football perspective.

In the end, it's a business.

 

[ivotuk]

He's violating his own rule: "Protect the Team."

 

[Spin Doctor]

Cool, explain to me why the Seahawks haven't fielded a top 10 defense since 2016, Carroll. Explain to me why you surrounded yourself by defensive coordinators such as Norton Jr. with a track record of failure? Random in house advancements, sometimes for guys that failed upward like Hurtt.

Look, Carroll knows much more about football than fans, or non football people ever will. That being said, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the Seahawks have not been trending in the right direction. At the age of 73, being a year away from the end of the contract that had an option for a 5th year, I think it was time to assess whether Carroll could bring us to where we wanted to go with the time left on his contract. Watching the last 10 years have you gotten the impression that we were going to get there?

As well, we have to consider the implications for being focused on the short term solutions. Carroll traded significant draft capital for Williams without a contract in hand. Williams played well, but we were still one of the worst run defenses in the NFL, two years running.

Hell, people always talk about playoff births around here. Well, think about this for a moment. The NFL expanded the amount of teams that make the playoffs each year. The bar for just getting to the playoffs is lower than ever. Before the playoff expansion we would've missed the playoffs in 2021, 2022 and 2023 as well as 2017.

It was time to move on.

 

[nanomoz]

He's in denial about how the defense continued to get worse for four years.

 

[keasley45]

Yeah. I think the reality of it all is beginning to set in. It does make you wonder how on board JS was with the whole thing. PC characterizing things the way he did definitely removes responsibility from Schneider in his eyes. But then again, i've not seen or heard the interview. Its easy to misinterpret things when you dont see or hear HOW they were said.

 

[Jerhawk]

Yeah. I think the reality of it all is beginning to set in. It does make you wonder how on board JS was with the whole thing. PC characterizing things the way he did definitely removes responsibility from Schneider in his eyes. But then again, i've not seen or heard the interview. Its easy to misinterpret things when you dont see or hear HOW they were said.

I agree to an extent... But words are words. He said what he said. I'm assuming he didn't say this in jest and in a joking manner

 

[toffee]

Pete was referring to all the pillow talk between our @Fade and lovely Jody. For whatever reasons, Pete doesn't consider fade as football people, kind of passive aggressive?

 

[OneLofaTatupu]

Well, that's tough coach. You've had YEARS to fix it.

You're a defensive coach and your defense finished near bottom the last two seasons. Why weren't these adjustments already made?

Sounds like sour excuses.

They’ll fix it in practice next week

 

[knownone]

Pete is speaking to the choir on dealing with people who don't understand the business they are overseeing.

 

[Maelstrom787]

Explain to me why you surrounded yourself by defensive coordinators such as Norton Jr. with a track record of failure? Random in house advancements, sometimes for guys that failed upward like Hurtt.

You see, this line of questioning kind of proves his point. Can we state that Ken's record is really one of abject failure? As fans doing a high level overview, sure. We can associate that with how we feel about the defense, but not a single person here is capable of going into a room with any of these dudes and understanding a lick of what they're saying.

The same can be said for the media.

The lack of full picture information we have leads us to conclusions that probably aren't entirely true. Is Ken Norton Jr. a bad coach? He appears to be one of the best linebacker coaches in the world and is respected to death by everyone he coached.

Carroll is right. The communication, comprehension, and information barrier that exists between professional coaches and media/fans makes it impossible to actually communicate in a way that can convince those laymen of anything.

Football fandom is just Dunning Kruger to the max, and Carroll is 1000000% right about that.

 

[onanygivensunday]

After a while, the message gets lost.

Time for a new messenger.

It's just that simple.

 

[toffee]

You see, this line of questioning kind of proves his point. Can we state that Ken's record is really one of abject failure? As fans doing a high level overview, sure. We can associate that with how we feel about the defense, but not a single person here is capable of going into a room with any of these dudes and understanding a lick of what they're saying.

The same can be said for the media.

The lack of full picture information we have leads us to conclusions that probably aren't entirely true. Is Ken Norton Jr. a bad coach? He appears to be one of the best linebacker coaches in the world and is respected to death by everyone he coached.

Carroll is right. The communication, comprehension, and information barrier that exists between professional coaches and media/fans makes it impossible to actually communicate in a way that can convince those laymen of anything.

Football fandom is just Dunning Kruger to the max, and Carroll is 1000000% right about that.

My sample size is really really tiny, but professional head football coaches in my experiences did not like to talk football with non-football people. George Seifert was a neighbor, but he wouldn't talk football with us. I dined with Jim Mora Sr a few times, sat next to him once, and again, no football talks.

 

[CalgaryFan05]

One of my favorite movie quotes of all time:

"Jesus - everything ends badly, otherwise it wouldn't end."



Sounds like he's definitely sour now that the thank you parties are over. It's not gonna help anything - he should really stop it.

Not gonna help his rep. Not gonna help get a new gig. Not gonna help his legacy. Not gonna help the teams reputation.

Pete, please stop it.

EDIT: and at the end of the day it's not the owner's responsibility to know 100% all of the football things that should be done. They can judge going by performance, you know? Not the owner's responsibility to have a footbal action plan to fix the HC's job - that's on him.

 

[Grahamhawker]

You see, this line of questioning kind of proves his point. Can we state that Ken's record is really one of abject failure? As fans doing a high level overview, sure. We can associate that with how we feel about the defense, but not a single person here is capable of going into a room with any of these dudes and understanding a lick of what they're saying.

The same can be said for the media.

The lack of full picture information we have leads us to conclusions that probably aren't entirely true. Is Ken Norton Jr. a bad coach? He appears to be one of the best linebacker coaches in the world and is respected to death by everyone he coached.

Carroll is right. The communication, comprehension, and information barrier that exists between professional coaches and media/fans makes it impossible to actually communicate in a way that can convince those laymen of anything.

Football fandom is just Dunning Kruger to the max, and Carroll is 1000000% right about that.

Of course he's right. We're all stuck grasping at straws to explain what we think we're seeing on the field. That's mostly all we get to form opinions about the 'why'. Ultimately, the 'what' -results on the field- matter most to fans and media and more importantly to the business managers. And regardless for how incomplete the collective knowledge and understanding might be, it's those results that necessarily leave Pete holding the bag.