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Pete Carroll has left. But he says he’s never really leaving Seattle.
Not after how the city, the area and the Pacific Northwest showered him with love and appreciation during his past year out of football, in the wake of the Seahawks firing him after 15 mostly glorious, unprecedented years as their coach and ultimate football authority.
“They were great years. It’s still home to me,” Carroll, the Las Vegas Raiders’ new coach, said of Seattle Tuesday inside the Indiana Convention Center at the NFL scouting combine.
He was responding to a question from The News Tribune on what his 15 years in Seattle leading the Seahawks meant to him.
He says he and his wife Glena are keeping their home in Seattle’s eastside suburbs, not far from Seahawks headquarters along Lake Washington, which he ran from 2010 through January 2024.
“Yeah,” he said. “Still home.
“I never would have known, had I not been hanging around the area this year, how much of a connection we have made with the community and the people. The fans and the people that I’ve met running through the airports and in the streets — wherever we’re going — have been so gracious. And it’s had such an obvious effect on me of how we did relate through the time we were together. And I’m really grateful for that. I’m REALLY grateful for that.”
Carroll, 73, agreed last month to return to the NFL after one year away watching his grandchildren play sports on Seattle’s eastside, to coach the wayward Raiders. He also spent this past fall watching the Washington Huskies’ practices and games. His son Brennan was UW’s offensive coordinator and offensive line coach for the 2024 season.
“This was a really unique (past) season for me, obviously. It wound up being full of grandkids and games,” he said. “I saw more football games this year than you can imagine. All the high school games, JV, varsity, UW games, and then of course everybody that’s playing all over the league and watching all those games.
“It was really rewarding, too, because you have an opportunity to look at a whole different vantage point. And in that, I saw things differently than I’ve seen them in a long time. So, I’m hoping to take advantage of that. I’m really excited about getting going again.”
The NFL’s oldest coach will turn 74 as his Las Vegas debut season begins in September. He has a three-year contract to revive one of the league’s signature franchises.
The Seahawks fired the only coach to win them to a Super Bowl trophy 13 months ago, days after his Seattle team missed the playoffs for only the third time in a dozen years. Team chair Jody Allen and vice chair Bert Kolde chose the path forward of general manager John Schneider over Carroll’s.
Carroll wanted to retain his coordinators and almost all his assistant coaches from the 2023 team. Schneider wanted to start over.
Schneider’s path included the Seahawks replacing Carroll with 37-year-old Mike Macdonald, the NFL’s youngest coach.
Macdonald went 10-7 in 2024. It was a one-win improvement over Carroll’s final season. But the Seahawks again missed the playoffs.
Carroll said he was surprised as he went to his grandkids’ youth football and volleyball and all ball games up and down the Puget Sound region.
“I didn’t have the idea that there was that much of an exchange,” Carroll said. “Like I said, even in coming here to the Raiders, my job isn’t just the team. It extends beyond that. It extends to our fans. It extends to the people that support us and fill our stadium up and make it hard to play because we’re filling every seat and all of that. They’re helping us win. So we’re all in this thing together.
“And taking that effort (from USC) to Seattle (in 2010), we were rewarded so extraordinarily because of the 12s and the way that they love their teams.
“So it was an unforgettable relationship. And I’m never going to lose connection with them. Because I just don’t want to.
“So I’m going to do everything I can to stay connected as much as possible.”
Why the Raiders?
When they fired him, the Seahawks tried to paint it as a mutual agreement to make him an adviser to the new coaching staff. Carroll didn’t advise anything. He watched all the JV football and basketball, girls volleyball tournaments and UW games. The “adviser” title was to keep the Seahawks paying Carroll approximately $15 million in the final year of his contract this past NFL season.
As soon as that season ended, he jumped back into the league, with the Raiders.
“If you remember, I didn’t retire. I did that purposely,” he said Tuesday. “I wasn’t ready to stop coaching. We had a nice agreement up there as we turned this thing around. I was really excited for John Schneider to get his chance to do what he gets to do.
“In my mind, I was always competing for what was coming up. Maybe the actions I took, because you didn’t see me very visibly, I was not making a point to do that. I really wanted to take to the opportunity of being around my family and all of that. Let’s stay with the game throughout. There was really not much of a shift.
“I do know what retirement will be like, though.”
He acknowledged that it will take some time with the Raiders, as he said it took “a couple of years” for his system to first take hold effectively with the Seahawks.
Las Vegas finished 4-13 in 2024. The Raiders are at the bottom of the powerful AFC West, stacked with three-time defending conference champion Kansas City plus fellow playoff teams the Los Angeles Chargers and Denver. They need a quarterback.
Carroll is doing this year with the Raiders what he did in 2010 with the Seahawks. He’s rebuilding a team while partnering with a first-time general manager. The Raiders’ new GM is John Spytek.
Carroll is also working with new Raiders minority owner Tom Brady. Carroll said the legendary retired quarterback is available any day to talk about the team’s course to turn everything around in Las Vegas.
“The urgency is there. It’s so obvious,” Carroll said. “Yet, there’s so much teaching and learning that’s going on that’s really exciting to me.
“It does take some time. I don’t know how long.
“I’m ready to go right now.”
Pete Carroll’s new perspective
Carroll said watching Lake Washington area JV games, UW college games and NFL games on television regularly for the first time since 2009 gave him a new perspective on the sport.
“You’re playing JV, college, NFL. There’s patterns to the game that I saw differently. There’s patterns to down-and-distance situations, whether you’re playing JV football or you’re playing for the Super Bowl,” Carroll said. “You can see that occur in games more clearly.
“Really, a lot of it was the analytic outlook of it. But it was kind of like...things kind of slowed down a little bit watching it this time around. When you’re in the midst of all of these seasons and every week you’re just so frantically going about planning for the next game you don’t get the chance to have that perspective and slow your mind down and really take a clear visual look at it.
“It was a real highlight. ...I could tell it was happening. I could tell I could see differently. I could feel the rhythms of the game differently,” Carroll said.
He smiled.
“I’m really excited to convey those things that we’re looking at differently than I have before,” he said. “I have a really strong philosophy about how we do things and why we do what we do. But yet, if you’re competing then you have to be dynamic enough to continue to grow and expand.
“I’m really interested to see how that plays out.”
