5 pros and cons of firing Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll
By Lee Vowell
This is not a fun article for me to write, to be honest. I like Pete Carroll as the Seattle Seahawks head coach and the way he handles himself off the field. In an ever-growing negative world, Carroll has always been a fountain of positivity. Maybe some people see that as fake, though even Marshawn Lynch, who admits to not liking a rah-rah style coach in general, says Carroll is always the same no matter the hour of the day.
The Seahawks have had the most consistently successful era since Carroll and general manager John Schneider came to Seattle in 2010. The players have changed, the offensive and defensive coordinators have moved on, and though the Seahawks are struggling in 2023, the team made the playoffs just last year. Pete Carroll knows football.
But every coaching regime comes to a close eventually, and Seattle might simply need a new set of eyes to figure out what is going wrong and how to take a relative young and talented roster and make it more efficient and better. After another loss to the San Francisco 49ers in Week 14 and Seattle being the losers of four straight (the first time under Pete Carroll), the time seems to have come to make a head coaching change for the Seahawks.
Con to firing Pete Carroll as the Seahawks coach No. 1 - You don't know what you get
OK, admittedly this is not a perfect reason to keep Carroll around, but many times and underrated question when removing a long-term player or coach is just this: Do you know for sure that the player or coach who does the replacing is an upgrade over what you previously had? We cannot forget that Carroll has been the winningest coach in Seahawks history.
Though the third-down deficiencies and bad penalties have been the Seahawks Way over different coordinators and for a decade and the through-line over that time is Carroll, the other part of that is that Seattle making the playoffs 10 times between 2010 and 2022 is in large part due to Carroll as well.
If Seattle brings in another head coach, can the team guarantee the same kind of success over the next decade? Otherwise, why make a change? Some 12s might not care for Carroll, but if his replacement is worse then what has been gained by losing Pete? Nothing.