Where did Pete go wrong?

[renofox]

Simplified: He placed loyalty to personnel over the good of the team.

 

[Ozzy]

The "told them he was going to retire" is pretty unconfirmed, no? Thought I only saw that from Pauline, and Pauline is about as accurate as Tim Tebow's left arm these days.

Yep it’s a rumor at this point. It sort of lines up though since JS has been researching coaches for a few months so it seems like something triggered that?

 

[Ozzy]

Sure they were. Any QB's stats would be abysmal trying to follow those sad game day plans.

I just looked them up, they’re actually pretty good especially when you consider you’re playing the best teams in the league.

 

[JayhawkMike]

Nobody is calling you names.

Of course, there is a double standard at work. Slander and name calling is embraced in the absence of rational as long as it is directed at players and coaches and front office and owners and journalist who have little to nothing to do with this forum.

That double standard behavior is what I was addressing.

You called him a slanderer when he was only stating the truth Which by definition cannot be slander. Might just pick a different thread as many want to vent about PC and the PC Fluffers are not going to convince people. death doesn’t turn people into saints and being fired doesn’t turn coaches into better coaches.

ONE playoff win in SEVEN years. Address how that is not an abysmal failure please.

 

[Jville]

You called him a slanderer when he was only stating the truth Which by definition cannot be slander. Might just pick a different thread as many want to vent about PC and the PC Fluffers are not going to convince people. death doesn’t turn people into saints and being fired doesn’t turn coaches into better coaches.

ONE playoff win in SEVEN years. Address how that is not an abysmal failure please.

Not true.

I posted remarks about the nature and practice of slander. And, left an open question as quoted below. As re posted below .................

Slander is a diversion from a practitioners miserable life.

Football forums are a notorious magnet.

There is nothing truthful about slander.

Slander is a lazy disingenuous habit

And whose truth would that be?

The Slanderer?

Nobody is calling you names.

Of course, there is a double standard at work. Slander and name calling is embraced in the absence of rational as long as it is directed at players and coaches and front office and owners and journalist who have little to nothing to do with this forum.

That double standard behavior is what I was addressing.

Note that all posters are free to self identify with content within any post.

 

[Parallax]

How long do you want Carroll to be coaching Seattle, one year? Two years?, Three year? Carroll was going to be the oldest coach to ever coach an NFL game at some point during the 2023 season. In addition to that, Carroll's teams started to show diminishing returns. I get that Carroll was successful, but it was time.

Carroll was defensive coach that couldn't build a defense. It has been since 2016 that the Seahawks have fielded a top 10 defense. In recent years the Seahawks were near the bottom of the league in defense. In addition to this, our post season record has been absolutely dismal since we lost the Super Bowl. We had exactly one playoff win in a 7 year span, that win? It was against a 40+ year old McCown that was suddenly thrust into the game due to an injury.

To add insult to injury, Carroll was unable to keep up with McVay and more recently Kyle Shanahan. Carroll went 2-4 the conference this season. If not for a normally reliable, Matt Prater missing two easy field goals, Carroll would be 1-5 in the division. Mind you, this was in a season that Pete Carroll absolutely destroyed our cap and sold out to try and make a deep post season run, in addition to trading a second round pick for a player not on the books past 2023.

We also must mention that the last two times we were in the playoffs we were escorted out by out by divisional rivals in an embarrassing fashion. It's Pete Carroll's inability to challenge McVay and more recently Shanahan that really led to Carroll's demise here.

There was also a caviler attitude that some of our players had. The team was undisciplined and some of our guys just seemed to be going through the motions. Carroll even publicly called out some of these guys in a press conference which is rare.

We could keep going and parsing through things, but I think you get the point. Carroll is absolutely, unquestionably the best Seahawks head coach ever. There is NO denying that. Will Mike Macdonald be as successful as Pete was here? I wouldn't take that bet, Carroll's overall body of work is impressive, even the staunchest of his detractors has to acknowledge that. Will he give the Seahawks a better long term prognosis than Pete Carroll? That I would bet on.

Pete had 1 year left on his contract with an option for an extra year attached. Given Carroll's age and the current state of the roster, do you think it made much sense to continue with Pete? Do you think in two years, he could make a Super Bowl run given our salary cap situation and various holes in the roster? Don't forget now, Pete hasn't even been competitive with 2/3 of our division rivals for years at this point.

If the answer you gave to that last question is "no" then it doesn't make sense to keep Pete Carroll on the team given his age. You're just wasting time at that point to fulfill the rest of his contract. We're at the point were we need a long term plan in place, Carroll didn't have such a plan. Pete kept making short term based decisions to go for a run when we didn't have the roster for it. Thie current situation given Pete's age would be a purgatory. Carroll would not have had the roster ready in just this offseason and possibly another one to make any sort of run, lets be real here -- especially with the looming cap issue. Seattle is in a position where we need to jettison some players and make some hard decisions, hard decisions that will inevitably create more holes to patch up.

Really well said. I'll add one thing. I was concerned after the Williams trade that Pete would continue to insist on short term moves that would mortgage the future. He already did damage with the cap and that trade. What if he traded next year's first? Or the next few firsts? Where was the limit with him having final decision making authority? I'm relieved he's gone.

 

[RolandDeschain]

I am also looking forward to not hearing as much from the "Pete's great, the game plan is fine, we just didn't execute" crowd, who specialized in IGNORING the fact that execution is a LOT harder when the defense knows exactly what you're going to do all the damn time.

 

[hoxrox]

Sure they were. Any QB's stats would be abysmal trying to follow those sad game day plans.

Agreed on the sad gameplan. Any gameplan that capped Carson at 16 touches with 27 passes for RW was recipe for disaster.



Especially against a Rams team that had a strong pass rush and pass defense, but not a great run defense that year.

That wasn't the balanced attack that Pete wanted. That was the clear "philosophical difference" between he and Shotty.

Sean Payton, on the other hand, understood that a pass happy offense under RW would not work well. Thus Russ being largely relegated to game management this past season.

Pete's issue wasn't that he meddled too much in the gameplans. His issue was that he ceded too much control to his coordinators, and he did not stay true to what made his USC and LOB teams so successful in the first place.

 

[JayhawkMike]

And whose truth would that be?

The Slanderer?

The name caller

 

[Jville]

You called him a slanderer when he was only stating the truth Which by definition cannot be slander. Might just pick a different thread as many want to vent about PC and the PC Fluffers are not going to convince people. death doesn’t turn people into saints and being fired doesn’t turn coaches into better coaches.

ONE playoff win in SEVEN years. Address how that is not an abysmal failure please.

The truth is ....... it's up to each of us to individually deal with our disappointing experiences.

May you eventually overcome and learn and grow from them.

 

[knownone]

The objective answer is that the Seahawks play in a tough division, couldn't consistently overcome their two biggest rivals, and failed to find solutions on defense for nearly half a decade. Whether you attribute those failings directly to Pete's philosophy, coaching, strategy, player acquisition, declining culture, or [insert your theory here] is entirely subjective. We don't know.

We know Seattle had the 8th most wins over the past five seasons. That's one fewer than the Rams and the same as the Niners. So, it could also be said that Pete didn't go wrong, so much as he found himself in a situation where he did not fit ownership's timeline. And the narrative was against him because the team underperformed in a pivotal season and wasn't winning meaningful games.

Again, this is another Rorschach test for our fanbase to project their ideas onto the situation. So, the nuances of the situation will be glossed over by most. For example, just because Jody chose to move on from Pete doesn't mean keeping Pete was necessarily the wrong decision. Why? Jody's decision is hers. It's not universal. In other words, just because you get fired doesn't mean your boss's judgment of your performance/future performance is correct. Jody is doing what she thinks is right for the franchise. That doesn't have to be an indictment on Pete.

 

[JayhawkMike]

Not a single Pete fluffer will address this:

ONE playoff win in SEVEN years. Address how that is not an abysmal failure please.

well?

 

[Jville]

Not a single Pete fluffer will address this:

ONE playoff win in SEVEN years. Address how that is not an abysmal failure please.

well?

Is the above quote an example of slander or an accidental posting in the wrong forum?

A fluffer is a person employed to keep a porn performer's penis erect on the set.[1] After setting up the desired angle, the director asks the actors to hold position and calls for the fluffer to "fluff" the actors for the shot. These duties are considered part of the makeup department. While fluffing does not necessarily involve touching the actors, it could entail sexual acts such as fellatio or non-penetrative sex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluffer

 

[GemCity]

Disregarding a player that was on the team because you don't like him. Lol.

Yeah Wilson could have thrown the ball better, but the saddest thing is he shouldn't have had to for a couple reasons. First, the pass wouldn't have been near as bad if Ricardo wouldn't have half assed his route and hit his mark. Second, the pass should have never happened because the worst call in NFL history should have never been called in the first place.

This. .

Anything else besides this is, imo, garbage.

 

[Spin Doctor]

I won't deny any of the issues you brought up, but...



I don't see how this translates to "get rid of him". I just don't. It's like saying that Toyota vehicles have a great reputation for durability, let's get rid of ours. Huh? You don't think the first part should influence the second at least a little bit?

If what Pete has accomplished is mediocrity, then the entire league outside of Brady and Mahomes is mediocre. You're right that our defense has been bad and we've struggled to put together playoff runs, but that doesn't cancel out Pete's overall body of work and how it compares to the rest of the league. If anything, his record and the # of playoff games we've reached DESPITE the mediocre roster and lack of a QBOTF just illustrates that there was a case to keep him around and allow him to keep building on the last two very solid drafts, not to mention get a QBOTF.

If you ask me, guys like Tomlin, Payton, and Coughlin should be welcome to keep coaching until they feel like retiring. No matter how many impatient fans are trying to infer that Super Bowl appearances happen by accident, you can't find anyone other than Belichick and Reid who are doing any better.

I'll just end with this: a lot of Rams fans are starting to sound like this board. McVay is NOT outperforming Pete overall.

That is not how the NFL works. The NFL is the not for long league, a place where you can be on top of your game one year, and the scapegoat the next. Carroll had all of the resources and freedom at his disposal to right the ship and make another run. If the Seahawks were in a state to make another run, it makes more sense to let Pete try for one last ride. Unfortunately that is not how it is. We sold out to go on a run and it failed, now the roster is in need of some major retooling.

Carroll did have an amazing run, but he was clearly on the downslope of his career. The Seahawks have won our division exactly once since 2017, since 2017 we have a singular playoff win, since 2017 we've been in the bottom half of the NFL defensively. It's very clear that Carroll had fallen below our division rivals.

Explain to me how McVay isn't outperforming Pete? Since McVay was hired to the Rams, he has won the division 3 times vs. Carroll's one NFC West title.

McVay is 10-5 all time vs. Pete in the regular season, 11-5 if we consider the playoff victory the Rams have over us. McVay since 2017 has been to the Super Bowl 2x and came away with one victory. He is 7-4 in that span with one SB win, Carroll is 1-3 in that same time period. The Rams had an injury plagued year and had to purge their roster because they sold out to win the Super Bowl. They beat us twice and went to the playoffs despite the Seahawks having a much stronger start.

I don't know how you can extrapolate that McVay isn't out performing Pete. He has a better overall record, more playoff wins, two Super Bowl appearances, more divisional titles within the span of him being hired until now. How is that not being out performed? In virtually every metric he is out performing Pete.

It was time to move on, Carroll had lost his touch and his long term prognosis was looking worse and worse.

 

[nanomoz]

From a 10,000-feet view: I think the most fundamental problem was that he didn't really have to answer to anybody, at least, in the regular flow of process, that was truly empowered to ask tough questions. And any time the media even started to ask tough questions, he balked.

It resulted in a disconnect between his vision for the team and the team on the field. He continued to claim he wanted to complete the circle of toughness but so many decisions were at odds with building that sort of team. It ended up with a team that was kind of a Pete team, and kind of a team influenced by coordinators that didn't have enough agency.

It resulted in a fundamental lack of identity that's jumped off the screen for years. Even when the team had some success.

I admit that some of this is conjecture with conclusions, but it's all rooted in observing this franchise really closely for a long time.

 

[Parallax]

Is the above quote an example of slander or an accidental posting in the wrong forum?

That's a great example of how to sidestep a question.

 

[Parallax]

That is not how the NFL works. The NFL is the not for long league, a place where you can be on top of your game one year, and the scapegoat the next. Carroll had all of the resources and freedom at his disposal to right the ship and make another run. If the Seahawks were in a state to make another run, it makes more sense to let Pete try for one last ride. Unfortunately that is not how it is. We sold out to go on a run and it failed, now the roster is in need of some major retooling.

Carroll did have an amazing run, but he was clearly on the downslope of his career. The Seahawks have won our division exactly once since 2017, since 2017 we have a singular playoff win, since 2017 we've been in the bottom half of the NFL defensively. It's very clear that Carroll had fallen below our division rivals.

Explain to me how McVay isn't outperforming Pete? Since McVay was hired to the Rams, he has won the division 3 times vs. Carroll's one NFC West title.

McVay is 10-5 all time vs. Pete in the regular season, 11-5 if we consider the playoff victory the Rams have over us. McVay since 2017 has been to the Super Bowl 2x and came away with one victory. He is 7-4 in that span with one SB win, Carroll is 1-3 in that same time period. The Rams had an injury plagued year and had to purge their roster because they sold out to win the Super Bowl. They beat us twice and went to the playoffs despite the Seahawks having a much stronger start.

I don't know how you can extrapolate that McVay isn't out performing Pete. He has a better overall record, more playoff wins, two Super Bowl appearances, more divisional titles within the span of him being hired until now. How is that not being out performed? In virtually every metric he is out performing Pete.

It was time to move on, Carroll had lost his touch and his long term prognosis was looking worse and worse.

Really well said.

Fans have been using the term "NFL purgatory" in recent years to describe our program. We've been stuck in this place of not being truly terrible (or good enough to land a top draft pick if you prefer) but not good enough to compete in any meaningful way or pull off a deep playoff run.

Some fans appear to have been content with this state of affairs. They use averages to assert that Carroll was doing a fabulous, fabulous job. For others among us (me included), this has been hellish. Boring like watching paint dry and frustrating and aggravating. No one is going to use averages to convince us everything is (or was) just fine. My response to those promulgating averages is the old saw that there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics. They can be twisted to support any point of view. Twist the numbers until they scream but I'm incredibly relieved ol' Pete is gone and I'm excited as heck about the future. Go Hawks! (Haven't felt that in a long time. So great to feel that way again.)

 

[Jville]

That's a great example of how to sidestep a question.

Let's reference the complete quote .........

Not a single Pete fluffer will address this:

ONE playoff win in SEVEN years. Address how that is not an abysmal failure please.

well?

Is the above quote an example of slander or an accidental posting in the wrong forum?

A fluffer is a person employed to keep a porn performer's penis erect on the set.[1] After setting up the desired angle, the director asks the actors to hold position and calls for the fluffer to "fluff" the actors for the shot. These duties are considered part of the makeup department. While fluffing does not necessarily involve touching the actors, it could entail sexual acts such as fellatio or non-penetrative sex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluffer

 

[Parallax]

Let's reference the complete quote .........


Is the above quote an example of slander or an accidental posting in the wrong forum?

You've completely lost me . . . but whatever.