From college to the NFL, from USC to Seattle, Pete Carroll has been one of the best coaches in football over the last two decades. He won two national titles with the Trojans and led the Seahawks to two Super Bowls, winning one and coming one play away from winning the other. Overall, he’s led the Seahawks to the playoffs in eight of the last ten seasons.
How does he do it?
“Pete has a way of letting players bring out the best in each other,” Seahawks radio voice Steve Raible said on After Hours with Amy Lawrence. “He is a very big believer in if you let people be themselves and let their personalities come out, then you’ll get the best out of them on the football field or in the office or in the classroom or with their family or church or wherever they are. You’ll get the best out of that person if you nurture that and let that person grow.”
Some coaches want players to suppress their personalities; Carroll is the exact opposite.
“Pete wants people to be themselves, and in some cases, that draws the best – Russell, Bobby, K.J., without question,” Raible said. “And some guys, maybe they get a little full of themselves or they believe they are now in a position that they can criticize or they can believe what they want to believe, and that’s fine. Most of those guys aren’t here anymore. So it becomes this team that believes from very early stages. They believe in what he is saying, and you’ve got the right leaders that are helping to teach those young guys.”
Carroll is the oldest head coach in the NFL, but you wouldn’t know it by his sideline energy.
“He is the youngest 68-year-old I think I’ve ever met,” said Raible, 65. “To see him doing what he does, he’s out there before the game, he throws the ball 35, 40, 45 yards downfield to one of the managers, one of the ball guys who he throws with every week before the game. I’m lucky if I can get up and down the steps to the press box. This guy is amazing. He thinks young and he believes young and he exudes that enthusiasm that you would wish all coaches had. . . . He is something special. All we can all hope here is he decides to coach well into his 70s.”