Breaking News: Pete Carroll is Done as Seahawks Head Coach

Wow. I don't think anyone saw this coming. Sure, Pete Carroll was the oldest coach in the league. But not once did he ever coach, look, or act like it. And as recently as dramatic prime time win in Week 15, he proved he still has that ability to make his whole roster want to Kool-Aid Man through the wall of the locker room:

Now is the time for a quick reaction, not for long career retrospectives. But I think Carroll will be remembered first and foremost as the ultimate "players coach." A relentlessly supportive, upbeat, nurturing type who always chose to motivate his troops with positive reinforcement instead of criticism. At least not in public. 

And he got results. He'll forever be associated with the elite Seahawks teams he built in the mid-2010s. And well he should. Those teams were absolute wagons on both sides of the ball. Especially the Legion of Boom defense, that was last in the league in points allowed an astonishing four years in a row. And which beat the Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII by holding the most prolific offense in NFL history to just 8 garbage time points and 306 yards of total offense. Out of respect I won't mention what happened at the end of the next Super Bowl at this time. Instead I'll just say that it was one of the best game in history against two extremely worthy opponents.

I think it's also significant that he pulled off one of the rarest feats in all of pro football, which is to get a third chance at coaching. How often does someone ever get back on the sidelines without winning a championship at his first two stops? I don't know, but I'm willing to bet you could count the names on your fingers. After one 6-10 season with the Jets and three years in New England that saw his W-L record decline with each passing season, he went to USC, recruited his ass off, won a National Title* and earned himself another shot in the pros. And he did not squander it. 

So a hell of a coaching career is over at the tender age of 72, headed into the semi-retirement of some front office job or as a brand ambassador. Carroll was a master motivator. An innovator, especially on defense. And a guy who treated everyone with respect, whether or not they deserved it (I'm looking at you, Boston media who tried to humiliate the man on a daily basis). A class act all the way. And never, ever guilty of the unpardonable sin of being boring. We'll miss him on those sidelines. And at practice. Godspeed.