After ‘hard’ 2021 season, Seahawks leadership ‘trying to win right now’
Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider watch warm ups before an NFL divisional playoff football game against the Green Bay Packers in January 2020 in Green Bay, Wis. (Mike Roemer / AP)
Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider watch warm ups before an NFL divisional playoff football game against the Green Bay Packers... (Mike Roemer / AP)More
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Bob Condotta By Bob Condotta
Seattle Times staff reporter
INDIANAPOLIS — The Seahawks in 2021 experienced a season unlike anything they’d had in the 12 years of the Pete Carroll/John Schneider era, filled with one disappointment after another.
It added up to the team missing the playoffs for just the second time since 2011 and the first losing season since that year.
But back then, the team was ascending, rebuilding from the collapse of 2008-09 and it was obvious the Seahawks had something going in the running of Marshawn Lynch and a young, talent-laden defense, with everything changing forever when Russell Wilson arrived a few months later.
The 2021 season brought only questions.
Was it time to blow it all up? Get rid of Carroll and/or Schneider? Trade Wilson?
Ultimately, none of that happened with the Seahawks appearing set on making another go at it in 2022 with largely the same cast.
But if Seahawks fans may have lost some faith during a 3-8 start that turned into a 7-10 final record, neither Carroll nor Schneider showed any doubt about their ability to turn things around when they met with the media at the NFL combine.
Carroll, who turns 71 in September, was energetic, optimistic and fast-talking as ever when he took his turn at the podium Wednesday.
“I’m freaking jacked up, if you want to know the truth,” Carroll said. “I’m jacked up. I’m not kidding. I’m not kidding. I can’t wait to get this thing going.”
The interviews here were the first for Carroll and Schneider since the end of the season, and since meetings with Jody Allen, the chair of the Seahawks.
And while there was much speculation about what might come of those meetings, Carroll said Wednesday they were pretty much business as usual.
Carroll said Allen did not request any specific changes, though, Carroll did make over the defensive coaching staff as well as firing offensive line coach Mike Solari.
Those could certainly prove to be significant.
But in general, the result of the meetings — as Carroll told it — is that he and Schneider had the full blessing of Allen to keep doing what they have been doing.
“She didn’t like losing,” Carroll said. “She didn’t like that. … But she just wanted to make sure that she was supporting all of the mentality to keep competing to find ways to get better, to improve and all that. So she supports us on what we’re doing.”
And for now, all anyone has is Carroll’s word on what Allen thinks as she has not talked to the media since taking over the team following the death of her brother, Paul, in October 2018.
“We’ve talked a number of times,” Carroll said. “I just wish you guys knew who she was. I just wish you did. And it’s because she’s amazing. And it’s because she’s such a competitor, it’s really what it gets right down to. So that makes sense, right, that I would, love that about her. She just keeps bringing the mentality of keep pushing the edges and keep finding the ways to keep moving forward and keep growing and never taking steps back and pushing and being tough about it and all of that.”
The decision to fire defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. and bring in two young coaches in Sean Desai and Karl Scott, who do not have ties to Carroll and have worked in systems different than his, to guide the secondary illustrated that Carroll took seriously an effort to fix the failings of the defense that were so obvious in 2021.
But when asked what went wrong last season, Carroll also alluded to the injury to Wilson, who missed the first three games of his career. Seattle was 2-2 heading into the game in which Wilson was injured, 3-5 by the time he returned, and 3-8 by the time he finally looked a little like himself, Along the way, the Seahawks lost five games by three points or fewer while each of their seven wins came by seven points or more.
“But during that stretch when Russ came back in action, we just didn’t win games,” Carroll said. “We were there in all of them. We just didn’t win the games. Whether it was a two-point conversion to tie the thing to go to OT (at Washington), or whether it was winning in OT, whether it was all of those things. Now I look back, I see it clearly. At the time, I was babbling, competing, and trying and get it done. Russ did a remarkable job of returning in four weeks. I wish I would’ve helped him more. I didn’t think I helped him as much as I could have. I always go back to what I could have done.’’
Carroll elaborated that what he’d wished he’d done differently is prepare game plans to emphasize the running game more as Wilson returned to form, the kind of plan Seattle executed down the stretch in winning four of its last six as Rashaad Penny emerged to give the Seahawks what was statistically one of the best rushing attacks in the NFL.
It’s that finish that has helped fuel Carroll’s excitement and the apparent confidence from Allen that the current leadership structure can get the job done. It’s worth noting that Carroll and Schneider signed new contracts during the 2020 season, through the 2025 season and 2027 draft, respectively.
Schneider likewise said that while the 2021 season was unpleasant, he remains no less confident that he and Carroll can get the team back on track.
“It was hard,” he said of the 2021 season. “It was really hard, but it also creates this excitement about like, ‘OK, we know how to do it. We’ve been here before. We’re going to do it again.’ All these games are, you look at like just the playoffs. All those were phenomenal games. And we had so many games that were so close that it could have gone, a play here, a play there, turnover here, turnover there. Now, me personally, I always say again, ‘OK, we have to do a better job. I have to do a better job in this area, in this area, in this area, in that area.’ So those are the things that I take personally and try to challenge our staff with.”
But what each said they won’t do in the face of the losing season is panic.
The travails of 2021 led to obvious speculation that the team might make more moves aimed at winning immediately, specifically in potentially pushing salary cap into future years to benefit the present.
But Schneider said he has no thought of abandoning the team’s long-held philosophy of trying to be competitive each season, a sentiment Carroll echoed.
“We’re trying to win right now,” Carroll said. “But it’s always about making sure that we’re making the right steps and the proper steps to move. We have to think as we draft guys, and as we sign guys out of free agency, there’s always the immediate urgency, yeah. But we have to have the mentality for the long haul also.”
Bob Condotta