There's no guarantee it'll only be a few years. It could be 1 or it could 15
Or 25. Or 35? How long did it take Seattle to get its first? Why is that not a more realistic time frame. 12 teams have never won a title. The Lions recently celebrated their first playoff win in 32 years. In the meantime Carroll racked up enough playoff wins to be tied for #11 all time, despite spending a decade in college football. Anyone who calls perennial winning seasons & playoffs 'mediocrity' simply has no concept of reality in the NFL.
What fantasy land are people living in, thinking Super Bowls just naturally come to those who wait. You all do realize that almost every Super Bowl since 2013 has been won by Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes - and whichever coach was attached to them? Teams hang banners for a reason, because division championships, playoff wins, and just making the playoffs are all accomplishments. And some of us like watching our teams win and get to the playoffs, whatever happens after, rather than in a state of perpetual irrelevance. Any fan not spoiled like Seahawks fan would surely agree.
Carroll kept the Seahawks relevant for 14 years against all kinds of downward pressure: NFL equalizing mechanisms, bad schedule luck in the hardest division in football, the worst travel schedule in the league, and so on. You guys that would fire the likes of Tomlin or Carroll for their 'winning mediocrity' are nuts. By your logic you would have also fired Jim Harbaugh in SF, John Harbaugh after missing playoffs 4 of 5 seasons, Sean Payton for three straight 7-9 seasons in NO. How about 3 brutal losing seasons for Shanahan? You're fired!
There are far too few good coaches in the league and far too many reasons why teams fall short year to year. Carroll has come back from the dead umpteen times: he led 3 elite defenses on 3 different teams in 3 different decades (49ers in the '90s, USC in 2000s, Seahawks in the 2010s). The various metrics used by analytics folks to isolate and measure coaching contribution are pretty uniform and undeniable when it comes to Carroll, even late into his tenure:
So what was Pete fired for after all, when these other ultimate coaching survivors above weathered much worse storms? After constructing an historically great team playing in back to back Super Bowls, then moving on from the ageing LoB to pivot resources to the offense and rebuild around Wilson, Pete kept the Seahawks competitive, if not outright contending, for years -- all with, let's face it, a selectively gifted but ultimately 'limited' quarterback. He was no Brady or Mahomes tier even at his peak. But as late as 2020 the Seahawks were 12-4, missing NFC first seed by only a hair. 2021 was the lost season with hobbled QB. Then came the bold trade and reboot with Geno, which absolutely everyone heralded as a success beyond all expectations in 2022, putting Carroll in the Coach of the Year conversation. 2023 was really the first truly disappointing and unexpected result (despite beating 3 teams that later made the playoff and producing another winning season). There are many extenuating factors one could point to, but in any case, for that Pete should have been asked to make changes (e.g. new DC) but allowed to finish out his contract.
Evan Hill and his mindless hoardes died long ago on the hill that Carroll was holding back the greatness of Russell Wilson. Just as soon as that myth was dispelled, they constructed a new one, that Pete was the cause of all of Seattle's defensive woes. Well, here we are 6 games into 2024 with a new defensive genius and we've now seen what nonsense that is too. Mike Sando of The Athletic reported that Seattle's defensive performance against the Lions was the third worst by EPA in 14 years. The Giants loss was even more humiliating. At home against the 49ers, they somehow topped it, looking like an absolute mess in all phases. That 49ers lineup by the way was easily their weakest in many years: an already diminished 2024 roster that was additionally missing many key players (McCaffrey, Feliciano, Pearsall, Hargrave, Greenlaw, Hufanga, Ward, Moody, etc.)
Coaching is hard, winning harder. Macdonald inherited a talented but uneven team: good offensive talent, good cornerbacks, and a defensive line that was finally coming together (after years of 'mediocre' drafting by John). The 'linebacker guru' Mike Macdonald has candidly admitted that it's linebacker play that is killing the defense right now, despite him resetting the roster there and it being where his greatest expertise lies. I'm still rooting for MM but we simply have no reason to expect greatness and it's far more likely he is the next Brandon Staley than he's the next Pete Carroll.