Pete's influence on Kyle Shanahan

[bileever]

Tim Kawakami had an interesting article about Pete Carroll's influence on Kyle Shanahan back in January. The two didn't have a relationship, but Shanahan says that he was influenced by Carroll's 2012 Seahawks' team that beat Mike Shanahan's Washington team in the playoffs. (That was the Washington team that had on its staff Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay, Matt LaFleur, Mike McDaniel, Bobby Slowik, and Raheem Morris.)

Shanahan says that after his dad was fired in Washington that he had hoped to be hired in Seattle--as a consultant because Bevell was the OC, but he got a job offer as an OC from the Browns so he took it before having a chance to talk to Carroll. It also turns out that Pete reached out to him years earlier when Pete was at USC but he didn't want to switch jobs at the time. So a lot of what ifs there.

It's also interesting that Shanahan runs Pete's 4-3 hybrid defensive scheme, since he refined his offense to specifically attack the Seahawk defense. The 49ers success with the Seahawk defense suggests that personnel--not scheme--had a lot to do with the failure of the last few Seahawk defenses. Robert Saleh has also had success with the Seahawks scheme in New York, as has Dan Quinn to some extent with the Cowboys.

In the article, Shanahan talks more about the intensity of the Seahawk defenses rather than the scheme, how he wanted to replicate that physicality. Given that, it makes sense that rather than focusing on the secondary, he drafted linebackers like Greenlaw and Warner and built the front line like he did. Despite the focus on the LOB, the success of the Seahawks defense may have relied more on the front seven. Shanahan may have realized that more than Pete did.

Kyle Shanahan on his 49ers tenure and competing vs. legends

Kyle Shanahan tells his best stories about coaching against Bill Belichick and what it feels like to be part of the New NFL Establishment.

theathletic.com

 

[ivotuk]

Great find! Thank you

 

[Mizak]

This past Super Bowl showed in a way that it did influence him. Everybody knows what happened at the end(Seahawks) vs the Patriots. Now, everybody knows what happened at the end(49ers) vs the Chiefs.

 

[Maelstrom787]

Tim Kawakami had an interesting article about Pete Carroll's influence on Kyle Shanahan back in January. The two didn't have a relationship, but Shanahan says that he was influenced by Carroll's 2012 Seahawks' team that beat Mike Shanahan's Washington team in the playoffs. (That was the Washington team that had on its staff Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay, Matt LaFleur, Mike McDaniel, Bobby Slowik, and Raheem Morris.)

Shanahan says that after his dad was fired in Washington that he had hoped to be hired in Seattle--as a consultant because Bevell was the OC, but he got a job offer as an OC from the Browns so he took it before having a chance to talk to Carroll. It also turns out that Pete reached out to him years earlier when Pete was at USC but he didn't want to switch jobs at the time. So a lot of what ifs there.

It's also interesting that Shanahan runs Pete's 4-3 hybrid defensive scheme, since he refined his offense to specifically attack the Seahawk defense. The 49ers success with the Seahawk defense suggests that personnel--not scheme--had a lot to do with the failure of the last few Seahawk defenses. Robert Saleh has also had success with the Seahawks scheme in New York, as has Dan Quinn to some extent with the Cowboys.

In the article, Shanahan talks more about the intensity of the Seahawk defenses rather than the scheme, how he wanted to replicate that physicality. Given that, it makes sense that rather than focusing on the secondary, he drafted linebackers like Greenlaw and Warner and built the front line like he did. Despite the focus on the LOB, the success of the Seahawks defense may have relied more on the front seven. Shanahan may have realized that more than Pete did.

Kyle Shanahan on his 49ers tenure and competing vs. legends

Kyle Shanahan tells his best stories about coaching against Bill Belichick and what it feels like to be part of the New NFL Establishment.

theathletic.com

This is why I pretty much discard the authority of people who try to tell me that the Carroll defense is a worthless, oversimplified, unplayable high school scheme.

Cover-3 is the most commonly run coverage in the NFL to this day, and the LOB changed the schematic meta in the NFL seemingly overnight.

Your modern offensive heroes respect Carroll for a reason. Carroll won more than he lost almost invariably for a reason. The NFL still runs Carroll's shit for a reason.

The fact that the fanbase has gotten to the point where it refuses to accept that our previous head coach is an absolute titan of the modern league is insane. You're supposed to be PROUD OF THAT!

Imagine going around like "Yeah, but Holmgren was a putz. A real f****** dolt. I hope he fullback dives himself straight to hell, the senile idiot." etc etc etc etc.

Everywhere you look around, Carroll's fingerprints are there in one way or another. He took us to a new level of respectability and organizational repute.

 

[Lagartixa]

This is why I pretty much discard the authority of people who try to tell me that the Carroll defense is a worthless, oversimplified, unplayable high school scheme.

Keep in mind that many of them are just repeating things they've heard from talking-head mediots or talk-radio mediots.

Cover-3 is the most commonly run coverage in the NFL to this day, and the LOB changed the schematic meta in the NFL seemingly overnight.

And not just on defense...

Your modern offensive heroes respect Carroll for a reason. Carroll won more than he lost almost invariably for a reason. The NFL still runs Carroll's shit for a reason.

The offenses called "modern" these days were developed in part to try to deal with defenses Pete Carroll created. I've got no problem acknowledging that even when he tried to evolve his defenses in response to the changes in offense, the results were not at all satisfactory, but the guy changed the way the NFL game is played on both sides of the ball. Despite having only won a single Super Bowl, he's a guy who greatly changed the game and deserves a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The fact that the fanbase has gotten to the point where it refuses to accept that our previous head coach is an absolute titan of the modern league is insane. You're supposed to be PROUD OF THAT!

Some of the anti-Carroll crowd was the Russellettes, convinced that Carroll was holding Wilson back. Wilson's production with the Broncos destroyed that notion, but the dislike for Carroll lived on even when that argument was shot (tho' I'll say at least one of our colleagues here was still blaming Carroll for Wilson's utter awfulness in Denver at least as recently as the 2023 offseason).
Of course, according to a bunch of former Seahawks players, Carroll did make critical mistakes involving Wilson that were a significant cause of the problems the team had after 2014. It wasn't that he was keeping Wilson from doing the great things Wilson and the Russellettes believed Wilson's talent would let him do if he weren't being "shackled" by Carroll. It was that Carroll didn't allow Wilson to be subjected to the same kind of accountability as the rest of the team. According to a lot of former players, Wilson's failure to even try to correct his many recurring failures was brushed under the rug, and criticizing him, even when nobody but the team was present, was prohibited, while the rest of the players were held accountable for the holes in their respective performance and expected to work on fixing them.
So it wasn't that Carroll was too hard on Wilson and kept him from performing. It was pretty much the opposite. He treated Wilson differently from how he treated the rest of the team by going too easy on Wilson and forcing the rest of the team to do so too. The result was the opposite of the popular media portrayal at the time of a great QB being held back by a head coach who couldn't recognize his greatness. What was actually happening is that Carroll was protecting a deeply flawed QB from accountability and by doing so, keeping him from doing the hard work necessary to improve his game.

Everywhere you look around, Carroll's fingerprints are there in one way or another. He took us to a new level of respectability and organizational repute.

I don't really care much anymore about stuff like how many Seahawks players or which ones make the Pro Bowl or the All-Pro teams, or whether the head coach or general manager is honored with a best-in-the-league-this-season award. It's nice to look back on a player's career and see what sports "journalists" thought about him at that time, but I'm much more interested in seeing the team win. And in the past, I did care more about individual awards as they happened. I even got mad that Schneider and Carroll didn't get awards back in 2012-2014, but now my focus is much more on the team and its on-the-field success. I care about how the individuals perform at their respective jobs, but I don't really care who does or doesn't win awards for it.

On the other hand, I do like to recognize the guys whose impact included league-wide changes in how NFL teams do business on and off the field, whether I like them (Carroll and Sherman, for example), don't like them (for example, Belichick as both a coach and a GM, and Daddy Shanahan), or neither (J.J. Watt, Ray Guy, Lawrence Taylor, Bill Parcells, and Bill Walsh, for example).

 

[projectorfreak]

It's kinda crazy , he changed the way the game was played and cuz he didn't change to adjust he was let go
I'm one of those who read his book and i do NOT read to many books but it was pete through and through
Fricken irony

 

[Donn2390]

This is why I pretty much discard the authority of people who try to tell me that the Carroll defense is a worthless, oversimplified, unplayable high school scheme.

Cover-3 is the most commonly run coverage in the NFL to this day, and the LOB changed the schematic meta in the NFL seemingly overnight.

Your modern offensive heroes respect Carroll for a reason. Carroll won more than he lost almost invariably for a reason. The NFL still runs Carroll's shit for a reason.

The fact that the fanbase has gotten to the point where it refuses to accept that our previous head coach is an absolute titan of the modern league is insane. You're supposed to be PROUD OF THAT!

Imagine going around like "Yeah, but Holmgren was a putz. A real f****** dolt. I hope he fullback dives himself straight to hell, the senile idiot." etc etc etc etc.

Everywhere you look around, Carroll's fingerprints are there in one way or another. He took us to a new level of respectability and organizational repute.

It's nice to hear some kind words and credit given to a true legend, while so many in here couldn't wait to shovel dirt on his grave after being dismissed.

 

[Maelstrom787]

It's nice to hear some kind words and credit given to a true legend, while so many in here couldn't wait to shovel dirt on his grave after being dismissed.

It's gross, man. It's unserious and it's toxic. People here have seemingly forgotten how bad it can get, even if we never did taste the promised land again after that Super Bowl tragedy.

Most of us felt like we had a chance the vast majority of the time. That is precious. Ask the fans of 20 other teams who've had to go through misery compared to our cushy past 22 years of mostly good football.

The Jets have not made the playoffs since Carroll's first year with Seattle! IT GETS SO MUCH MORE HOPELESS!

Pete was not perfect, but he was solid gold. He's what every team hopes to hire. We pined for coaches like John Harbaugh who had many-year-long runs of postseason underachievement as bad, if not worse, than Pete did.

 

[Sprfunk]

I'll always love Carroll. I think the main flaw was the trenches. They ignored DT for the most part, and failed too regularly on picks on both lines.

But he was IMHO the absolute best coach in the nfl for a stretch, and clearly the best seahawks coach of all time. And he did it while being positive, relatable, and honorable.
LEGEND.

 

[morgulon1]

This is why I pretty much discard the authority of people who try to tell me that the Carroll defense is a worthless, oversimplified, unplayable high school scheme.

Cover-3 is the most commonly run coverage in the NFL to this day, and the LOB changed the schematic meta in the NFL seemingly overnight.

Your modern offensive heroes respect Carroll for a reason. Carroll won more than he lost almost invariably for a reason. The NFL still runs Carroll's shit for a reason.

The fact that the fanbase has gotten to the point where it refuses to accept that our previous head coach is an absolute titan of the modern league is insane. You're supposed to be PROUD OF THAT!

Imagine going around like "Yeah, but Holmgren was a putz. A real f****** dolt. I hope he fullback dives himself straight to hell, the senile idiot." etc etc etc etc.

Everywhere you look around, Carroll's fingerprints are there in one way or another. He took us to a new level of respectability and organizational repute.

I like your comments regarding PC and what he did for the Seahawks and how he influenced not only the team but football as a whole. I am proud of that.

He lost steam , made some questionable coaching and personnel decisions and didn't adjust to a league that had adjusted to him.

 

[Hollandhawk]

This is why I pretty much discard the authority of people who try to tell me that the Carroll defense is a worthless, oversimplified, unplayable high school scheme.

Cover-3 is the most commonly run coverage in the NFL to this day, and the LOB changed the schematic meta in the NFL seemingly overnight.

Your modern offensive heroes respect Carroll for a reason. Carroll won more than he lost almost invariably for a reason. The NFL still runs Carroll's shit for a reason.

The fact that the fanbase has gotten to the point where it refuses to accept that our previous head coach is an absolute titan of the modern league is insane. You're supposed to be PROUD OF THAT!

Imagine going around like "Yeah, but Holmgren was a putz. A real f****** dolt. I hope he fullback dives himself straight to hell, the senile idiot." etc etc etc etc.

Everywhere you look around, Carroll's fingerprints are there in one way or another. He took us to a new level of respectability and organizational repute.

I actually frequently hear about teams using the "Seattle defense" on NFL radio. That says enough IMO.

 

[LastRideOut]

I have to agree, PC was/is a great coach. Nothing in the past few years has changed that.

It was just time. Sometimes it's just time for a coach to move on.

 

[CallMeADawg]

Love me some Pete Carroll. Great article.

 

[seahawks08]

I feel he will come back after recharging after this year. He has the passion and energy to coach and mentor. He is a great human being and he has been the best that we ever had to bring glory to this small market Seahawks. I wish he had someone who could have influenced him when he went hormonal. I don’t think he had someone who could have influenced him, but rather be blinded by his charismatic presence. Nobody felt qualified to advise him, they just became disciples who sometimes executed poorly. Coaches, players, scouting all started failing him, but his love and loyalty eventually took one last twist. I would love to see him be a HC and take a team to greatness and retire after lifting another Lombardi. He is absolutely deserving as the guy whose entire life revolved around football and coaching.

 

[xray]

I miss the open mouth gum chewing already . ;(