The rumor seems a bit ridiculous. Former Seattle Seahawks Vice President of Football Operations, and, more importantly, head coach Pete Carroll ending up back in the NFL, but not as a head coach? Instead, he would be the defensive coordinator of the rival San Francisco 49ers. Please, no.
The issue is the rumor comes from a completely verifiable source, the San Francisco Standard's Tim Kawakami. He has reported that the 49ers' front office has bandied Carroll's name about as the future OC if Carroll does not get offered and accepted the head coaching position of the Las Vegas Raiders. So, a few things have to happen for 12s to be upset, but they certainly could happen.
Carroll wants to coach again. If there was any doubt to that then he would have never been interested in the Raiders or Chicago Bears head coach position. He was. It might have seemed quaint for him to remain in the Seattle area after he was practically fired by the Seahawks so he could watch his son Brennan coach at the University of Washington.
There is a rumor the 49ers are interested in hiring former Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll
But Carroll is a grown man with grown man hopes, and he rightfully wants to do the thing he has done for most of his adult life: coach football. He was good at it, too. Sure, the Seahawks weren't nearly as good past 2015 as they were from 2010 through 2014, but Carroll's teams were never actually bad. He was simply too loyal to his coaching staff and some aging players, and the team was stuck.
The 49ers need a new defensive coordinator as they fired theirs earlier this offseason. The likely hope was that Robert Saleh would return, but he probably has aspirations to coach elsewhere. (Maybe he also has gotten a job somewhere; the NFL coaching carousel is difficult to keep up with.) That means San Francisco still needs a DC, and Carroll is a defensive coach.
The sad part for Seahawks fans is that Carroll's fit with San Francisco is, in the words of Dennis from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, purr-fect. The coach is a northern California native with deep ties to the 49ers (he was the defensive coordinator there in the mid-1990s). Plus, if he is successful and gets a head coaching opportunity in 2026, it's not like the 49ers aren't used to changing DCs often.
There is another side to this as well. Most Seahawks fans still like Pete Carroll even if they do not think he should have remained the head coach with the team. What if he goes to the 49ers and fails? Sure, that would be good for Seattle possibly, but there would be a lot of sadness about Carroll's career coming to a thud.
