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Pete Carroll not returning as Seahawks coach

Published

2 years ago

January 11, 2024

Pete Carroll not returning as Seahawks coach

Pete Carroll will not return as head coach of the Seattle Seahawks next season but will remain with the franchise as an adviser, the team announced Wednesday.

Carroll, who’d just completed his 14th season with the Seahawks, made it clear at a news conference Wednesday that he would have preferred to return next season as the team’s head coach. “I competed pretty hard to be the coach, just so you know.”

“Following season-ending meetings with ownership … it’s clear, and for a variety of reasons, we mutually agreed to take a new course,” he said.

During the news conference that saw the 72-year-old become emotional when thanking his staff and family members, he said he won’t be involved in the franchise’s search for his replacement but that general manager John Schneider will be involved and spoke highly of his longtime coworker. Additionally, responsibilities for his new role with the organization had not yet been defined.

“It’s about this organization being successful and being on course for the long haul of it, as well. And I realize that,” he said. “I mean, I’m about as old as you can get in this business, and there’s come a time they got to make some decisions. So moving toward the future, if there’s some way I can add something to them down the road, we’ll see what happens.”

Carrol continued, “But this is a good move for them. And Johnny’s (GM John Schneider) going to take this thing, take the bull by the horns and roll.”

Carroll guided the franchise to back-to-back Super Bowl appearances in 2013 and 2014, including a victory in Super Bowl XLVIII. The Seahawks are 137-89-1 and have only finished below .500 three times under Carroll.

GO DEEPER

The Pete Carroll era in Seattle is over. Here’s why the Seahawks moved on after 14 years

“Pete is the winningest coach in Seahawks history, brought the city its first Super Bowl title, and created a tremendous impact over the past 14 years on the field and in the community. His expertise in leadership and building a championship culture will continue as an integral part of our organization moving forward. Pete will always be a beloved member of the Seahawks family,” Seahawks chair Jody Allen said in a statement. Allen was not present at Carroll’s news conference.

Statement from Jody Allen – Chair, Seattle Seahawks pic.twitter.com/RNUZvF6Vgp
— Seattle Seahawks (@Seahawks) January 10, 2024

Following Seattle’s 21-20 win against the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday, Carroll told reporters he expected to return to the Seahawks. The 72-year-old coach told Seattle Sports on Monday: “I plan to be coaching this team. I love these guys, and that’s what I would like to be doing and see how far we can go. I’m not worn out. I’m not tired. I’m not any of that stuff.”He said on Wednesday those statements were “true to the bone.”

Seattle was eliminated from playoff contention in Week 18 when the Green Bay Packers defeated the Chicago Bears. That marked just the fourth time since Carroll was hired that the Seahawks failed to make the postseason.

The Seahawks’ defense under Carroll has been on a steady decline over the last decade. Since 2013, Seattle’s ranking in defensive EPA has fallen almost every season: first, third, seventh, seventh, eighth, 15th, 19th, 18th, 22nd, 25th and 29th this season.

Prior to taking the job as Seahawks head coach in 2010, Carroll spent nine seasons as the head coach at USC. He posted a 97-19 record with the Trojans and won two national championships.

Before USC, he spent three seasons as the head coach of the New England Patriots. And a season as the head coach of the New York Jets.

Is this move surprising?

Carroll no longer having the title of coach is surprising, though the move is not hard to justify. Only six teams have a higher winning percentage than the Seahawks since he took over the team in 2010. He won a Super Bowl in that span and came within one yard of winning another. But Seattle has missed the playoffs in three of the last seven seasons and hasn’t won a playoff game since 2019.

In that time, Seattle has had high draft picks and made a bunch of win-now trades — Jadeveon Clowney in 2019, Jamal Adams in 2020 and Leonard Williams in 2023 — but the team hasn’t been able to get over the hump. This year’s team had talent but fell well short of its goal, which was championship contention. — Michael-Shawn Dugar, Seahawks staff writer

What’s Carroll’s legacy

Carroll is the best Seahawks coach in franchise history and is responsible for the team’s only Super Bowl victory, and two of their three appearances. He was the architect behind one of the greatest defenses of the modern era and established a culture players loved to be in. Many of Carroll’s former players still live in the area, communicate with him regularly and follow the team the way college graduates keep track of their alma mater.

Carroll will almost certainly land a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The coach to succeed Carroll will have massive shoes to fill. — Dugar

Required reading

(Photo: Matt Kartozian / USA Today)

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Culture

Try This Quiz on Oscar-Winning Adaptations of Popular Books

Published

2 days ago

January 26, 2026

Press Room

Try This Quiz on Oscar-Winning Adaptations of Popular Books

Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions — or even books. With the Academy Award nominations announced last week, this week’s challenge celebrates past Oscar-winning films that were based on books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their filmed versions.

Culture

What Kind of Lover Are You? This William Blake Poem Might Have the Answer.

Published

2 weeks ago

January 16, 2026

Press Room

What Kind of Lover Are You? This William Blake Poem Might Have the Answer.

By A.O. Scott and Aliza Aufrichtig

A.O. Scott is a critic at large for the Book Review. Aliza Aufrichtig is a visual journalist.

Jan. 16, 2026

Not every poem about love is a love poem. This one, from William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” first published in 1794, is more analytical than romantic. Instead of roses and violets, it offers us dirt and rocks.

William Blake (1757-1827), obscure in his own time and a hero to later generations of poets and spiritual seekers, made his living as an engraver and illustrator. He conceived and executed many of his poetic projects as works of visual as well as literary art, etching his verses and images onto copper plates and printing them in vivid color — a style designed to blur the boundary between word and picture.

From a 1795 copy of William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and of Experience.”

The Trustees of the British Museum

“The Clod & the Pebble” is set in a rustic tableau populated by wild and domesticated animals. In the print, we can’t quite see the main characters, who are presumably somewhere beneath the hooves and the ripples. But the cows and sheep, the frogs and the duck, are nonetheless connected to the poem’s meaning.

The two sections of “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” are meant to illustrate “the contrary states of the human soul” — the purity and wonder associated with early childhood and the harder knowledge that inevitably follows.

“The Clod & the Pebble” recapitulates this fall from sweetness into disillusionment, and the plate suggests it in contrasting ways. The wild animals down below symbolize a natural condition of innocence, while the livestock above live in confinement, bound to another’s use. At the same time, though, the cows and sheep are peaceful ruminants, while the frogs and the duck are predators.

In the poem, the Clod is an avatar of innocence. As it happens, this is a recurring character in the Blakean poetic universe. In “The Book of Thel,” a fantastical meditation composed a few years before the publication of “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” the Clod appears as a maternal figure selflessly nursing a baby worm:

The Clod of Clay heard the Worms voice, & raisd her pitying head;

She bow’d over the weeping infant, and her life exhal’d

In milky fondness

“We live not for ourselves,” she tells the poem’s heroine, a young girl named Thel. But in Blake’s system self-sacrifice can never be the last word. There is no innocence without the fall into experience, and no experience without the memory of innocence. Giving gives way to wanting.

Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.

Get to know the poem better by filling in the missing words below.

Question 1/6

First, the Clod’s perspective.

Love seeketh not Itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care;

Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.

Culture

Try This Quiz on Myths and Stories That Inspired Recent Books

Published

2 weeks ago

January 12, 2026

Press Room

Try This Quiz on Myths and Stories That Inspired Recent Books

Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s challenge tests your memory of 21st-century books that were inspired by ancient myths, legends and folk tales. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.