SEATTLE — After 14 seasons, 10 playoff appearances and the franchise's only Super Bowl championship, Pete Carroll has stepped down as Seahawks coach and will take on an advisory role, team owner Jody Allen announced Wednesday. .
Allen said in a statement that the decision was made “after thoughtful meetings and careful consideration for the best interest of the franchise.”
“Pete is the winningest coach in Seahawks history, gave the city its first Super Bowl title and created a tremendous impact over the past 14 years on the field and in the community,” Allen said. “His expertise in leadership and building a championship culture will continue as an integral part of our organization going forward.”
The role change comes after Carroll said in his postgame news conference on Sunday, and reiterated in a radio interview on Monday, that he intended to return as coach for the 2024 season.
“I plan to coach this team,” Carroll told Seattle Sports 710 AM. “I told them I love these guys, and that's what I'd like to do and see how far I can go. I'm not burned out. I'm not tired. I'm none of that. I need to do a better job and I need to help my coaches more and we need to do a better job as a coach, and there are a lot of areas to improve.”
The Seahawks finished their season on Sunday with a victory over the Arizona Cardinals, but missed out on a wild card spot with a 9-8 record. They got off to a 5-2 start that briefly kept them in first place in the NFC West, but that gave way to a slump in the second half that doomed their playoff hopes.
That second-half stretch included the Seahawks' only four-game losing streak in the Carroll era. Among those losses was a 31-13 beating on Thanksgiving night at the hands of the division rival San Francisco 49ers, who have beaten the Seahawks five straight times (including last season's wild-card round) by a combined score. from 148-72. The Seahawks also lost 37-3 to the Baltimore Ravens in November, their second-worst margin of defeat under Carroll.
Hired by the Seahawks in 2010, Carroll had the fourth-longest tenure with his current team of any head coach behind Bill Belichick, Mike Tomlin and John Harbaugh. At 72, Carroll had been the NFL's oldest head coach for several years, but had given no indication that he was close to retiring. The five-year extension he signed in 2020 put him under contract with the Seahawks through the 2025 season.
The Seahawks have no obvious head coaching candidates on their current staff. General manager John Schneider, who came with Carroll in 2010 and is signed through the 2027 draft, is now the highest-ranking member of his football operations department.
Carroll emerges as the winningest coach in Seahawks history, with a record of 137-89-1, including 10 playoff wins. Including his stints as head coach with the New York Jets and New England Patriots, his career record of 181-131-1 ranks 13th in NFL history in regular-season and playoff wins. . Along with Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer, Carroll is one of only three coaches to win a college national championship and a Super Bowl.
The Seahawks marked Carroll's third, and by far his most successful, stint as an NFL coach. He lasted one season with the Jets, who went 6-10 in 1994, and was fired by the Patriots after three seasons, having gone 27-21 in two playoff appearances.
After spending the 2000 season away from football and reshaping his coaching philosophy, Carroll was hired by USC, beginning a dominant nine-year career that included seven straight Pac-10 titles and a pair of national championships.
The Seahawks lured him away from USC in 2010 with the promise of having final say on personnel moves, something he didn't have in either of his previous two stops as head coach. Carroll, who also held the title of executive vice president of football operations, partnered with Schneider to lead the Seahawks on their most successful run in franchise history. Seattle's 10 playoff appearances since 2010 matched the number of times the Seahawks had made the postseason in their 34 years of existence before Carroll and Schneider arrived.
The Seahawks defeated Peyton Manning and the Broncos 43-8 in Super Bowl XLVIII. Their hopes of repeating as world champions next year against the Patriots were dashed when Malcolm Butler intercepted Russell Wilson's pass at the goal line in the final seconds. The Seahawks have made the playoffs six times in the nine seasons since then, but have not advanced beyond the divisional round.
