To describe Pete Carroll as distinct is understated—remarkably, significantly, comically understated. There’s nothing about Carroll that isn’t distinct. He’s a football coach among thousands of football coaches—and a genre of one.
Let’s start with what it’s like to interview the longtime Seattle Seahawks architect and longtime coach—until Wednesday. The bat phone dings, summoning a journalist to the franchise’s lakefront headquarters. When they arrive, employees escort them to the second-floor coaches’ wing. Carroll’s palatial office sits in the center of a circle of ever-smaller offices; his overlooks both Lake Washington and the practice fields. You can hear it before you see it. In my (somewhat limited) experience, the music is always on, always cranked to or near full volume, speakers always blasting some sort of tune that seems handpicked for the day’s discussion. Carroll is always chomping gum like he wants a few teeth to crack. He’s always smiling, too. But it’s a knowing smile, like he understands what you don’t, like you operate from different planes.
That’s part of what makes Carroll different from other coaches: his separator, an energy, an ethos, a vibe. Carroll was attuned to mental health before most coaches. He developed a process—distinctly his—long before The Process entered any sports’ lexicon. His legacy, while impressive separate of how he shaped it, is not what defines Carroll, nor how he should be remembered. Which is for his embrace of individuality. And for his oh-so human approach to shaping and coaching football teams, whether in college at USC or in the NFL with Seattle or any of his other, briefer stops.
