The Seahawks have exceeded expectations in 2022 whether they stick at 7 wins or not. But it still might be time for Seattle to make a head coaching change. I certainly don’t want this to sound like an agist article. Pete Carroll is 71 years old but he has the energy of a 30-something.
But nearly every coaching regime, no matter how successful, gets stale over time. This definitely happened to Seattle post-2015 when many of the players who had made the Seahawks great in the early 2010s seemed to tire of Carroll’s style of coaching. Richard Sherman, Michael Bennett, and maybe even Russell Wilson went elsewhere (either by being released or basically forcing a trade) and seemed happy to leave.
Carroll has always been fantastic with very young players as his energy is contagious. Rookies Tariq Woolen, Ken Walker III, and Coby Bryant are learning and also having fun. If they had been drafted by the Patriots, for instance, would there be as much infectious joy from the coach to play football? No.
But then players get to be successful and the contracts get bigger and the happiness of simply playing the game gets overcome by the need to make generational wealth. This can affect the chemistry of a locker room. Is this a coach’s fault? Not so much. But a young team gets older and we have already seen one era of an aging Seahawks team begin to tune out Carroll.
Four coaches who could replace Pete Carroll for the Seahawks
The other issue is that for the past many years Carroll hasn’t seemed to have made smart hiring decisions defensively. And Carroll is a defensive coach so Seattle’s defensive side should always be decent. Instead, the defense has been bad. The Seahawks might just need a new direction for the team.
Carroll would still be Vice President of Football Operations and have a hand in how the roster is built and the team is run. He just won’t make the coaching decisions and won’t make the on-field decisions. And if the Seahawks are going to make a change, doing so this offseason before the high-end draft capital is used or a relative lot of cap space is consumed (two things that don’t happen to an NFL team often at the same time) might be the time to do it. Here are some coaches who are worthy of replacing Carroll.
Seahawks head coaching target: Dan Quinn
Bring Dan Quinn back home! Quinn, as most 12s know, was the defensive coordinator during two of the best seasons in Seahawks history, 2013 and 2014. The team went to back-to-back Super Bowls and won one of them. Before that, he had been the team’s defensive line coach in 2009 and 2010. After leaving Seattle before the 2015 season, Quinn went to coach the Atlanta Falcons and was highly successful during his first three years with Atlanta.
And that head coaching experience should come in handy if he winds up back in Seattle as the HC. There can be no doubt that Quinn is one of the best defensive coaches in the NFL over the last 15 years, though. Bradley’s Falcons teams suffered from a lack of quality and depth in the secondary while he was there so that hurt the defense overall. But twice his rushing defenses finished in the top ten of the league.
Quinn is currently the defensive coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys. He has been the DC for two seasons. in 2022, Quinn’s rushing defense is 22nd in yards allowed but third in touchdowns allowed. And his pass defense has gone from 20th in 2021 to second this year.
The bottom line is Quinn’s teams improve after he is hired. Quinn is a pure defensive coach so he would need to make a smart offensive coordinator hire (or he could just retain Shane Waldron). But Quinn resembles a younger Pete Carroll in that he has previous head coaching experience and is a defensive-minded coach. Seattle’s offense should be good enough to win for several more years and with an improved defense the team could be a championship contender in 2023.
Seahawks head coaching target: DeMeco Ryans
It appears former defensive coordinators for the 49ers will make good head coaches. Maybe this is because they learn how to be so from 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan who also knows a thing or two about being a good head coach. OK, so maybe I am just referring to Robert Saleh of the Jets but there seems to be no doubt that New York is going to be good with Saleh as the coach and for some time to come.
Ryans, however, hasn’t just inherited good players from Saleh after Saleh left for New York. Ryans knows how to use the personnel he has and puts them in the correct positions to get the best out of their abilities. In 2022, the Seahawks coaching staff seems to have no idea how to do this on the defensive side of the ball.
Adding Ryans would give the Seahawks a young head coach. He would be 39 years old when the 2023 season began. But this would mimic what every other NFC West team has done in recent years. Pete Carroll has decades on every other coach. Again, Carroll might be older but is still a very good coach.
The difference is that while Carroll has a lot less time to be a head coach compared to Shanahan, Sean McVay, or Kliff Kingsbury (OK, maybe not Kingsbury – cough cough), the Seahawks have an opportunity to reshape the franchise this offseason. No team has the 2023 draft capital and the cap room Seattle has to go along with the talent already on the roster so why not hire a head coach who is going to be with the team for five seasons or more?
Seahawks head coaching target: Frank Smith
Smith has just one year as an offensive coordinator in the NFL (with the Dolphins in 2022) but he has been an offensive coach for 13 years. And everywhere that Smith has coached seems to have gotten better. Not only that, but Smith has some Pete Carroll-like qualities. He’s never coached under Carroll but one thing that Carroll has always done better than most coaches is to build a rapport with his players. Basically, if a player believes in the coach, that team normally performs better.
As the Raiders’ tight end coach from 2018 to 2020, Smith helped develop Darren Waller into one of the better TEs in the league. But this wasn’t simply due to Smith knowing the Xs and Os of offensive football. It’s also due to the personal relationship he built with Waller, as he has with other players.
Waller told NBC Sports in 2020
"I never had a relationship with a coach like I do with Frank. I honestly text him more than I text my friends. We laugh every day at practice, but I seriously respect him as a teacher and a coach and an authority figure you can talk to as a friend. Nothing’s off limits. We can be real and honest with each other about everything. That’s so important to me, having him in my life."
Sounds a lot like Pete Carroll, doesn’t it? Maybe some people don’t like how much Carroll is a players’ coach, but it works. Carroll has been successful for decades by being this type of leader and it fits well in Seattle.
Smith also knows how to take a young quarterback, like Tua Tagovailoa with Miami, and make him a lot more efficient by putting him in the best positions to succeed. The Seahawks are going to have a young quarterback sooner than later, but even if Geno Smith is retained for a couple of more seasons, whatever system Smith uses offensively is going to be a smart one that takes advantage of the talent Seattle has.
Seahawks head coaching target: Jim Harbaugh
Maybe there are a lot of reasons for 12s not to like Harbaugh. Mostly it probably stems from his time as the San Francisco 49ers coach from 2011 through 2014. The 49ers were mostly good at this time but due to maybe some regime conflicts, Harbaugh left and went to coach his college alma mater, Michigan. Here is the thing about Harbaugh, however. Everywhere he goes to coach, those teams win games.
There are some who might think Harbaugh isn’t interested in coming back to the NFL, and I don’t know the person so I wouldn’t know. That said, his brother John is still a coach in the NFL and NFL teams don’t seem to be afraid to be interested in Harbaugh coming to their teams. This would lead me to think that he hasn’t mentioned he never wants to go back to the league.
Also, Harbaugh would be following the same sort of path Pete Carroll did. Both were former NFL head coaches, went to a prominent college to coach and led those teams to great success and then, if Harbaugh comes back to the NFL, would be NFL head coaches again. Harbaugh also doesn’t seem like the kind of coach who would need absolute power. A working relationship between Harbaugh and general manager John Schneider seems very capable.
The other thing that Harbaugh brings to his teams is proper coaching and situational scheme along the offensive and defensive lines. The Seahawks might look a bit different on how the defensive line would work but that’s a good thing. Neither with the 49ers or with Michigan has Harbaugh’s defensive lines been bullied. The issue with Michigan at times has been the speed of the defense but that shouldn’t be an issue in the NFL.
Harbaugh would seem like a great fit for Seattle. Former Saints coach Sean Payton is a good coach as well and might be back in the NFL sooner than later, but the dynamic between Payton and Schneider might be tenuous. Harbaugh is a great football coach and bringing him to the Seahawks would make for a successful next decade.