Carroll: Seahawks change wasn’t made by ‘football people’

Pete Carroll opened up about the Seattle Seahawks' surprising decision to transition him from head coach into an advisory role this week after the team missed the playoffs with a 9-8 record.

Carroll, who coached Seattle for 14 years, explained on Friday that he tried to make his case to the team's ownership group while getting to the bottom of what happened with the club this past year at his end-of-season meeting. However, the 72-year-old said it was hard to communicate with ownership because "they're not football people," according to ESPN's Brady Henderson.

"The first thing that we do is we go through the season and what happened and what took place and what were the reasons why, what could have done better along the way and what would be the choices to move ahead," Carroll said. "I have very, very strong feelings about what we did and where we screwed it up and why we didn't come through the way we wanted to."

He added: "Then, OK, what is the essence of the adjustments that are necessary? That's where maybe we don't see eye to eye on. Because I see it one way and I think I've got a way to fix it and I'm not going to kind of halfway fix it. I'm trying to fix it so it's perfect. ... They may not agree with it. They may not see that that's the right answer or that's not the answer that makes them feel good. It's really hard because they're not football people. They're not coaches, so to get to the real details of it is really difficult for other people. ... There's times where I kind of shrug my shoulders, 'OK, that's as far as we got and I can't take you any farther in this timeframe we have and you're going to understand it that way and we're going to see it another way and we're not going to see eye to eye.'"

The winningest coach in franchise history, Carroll said Wednesday that he fought to remain the team's head coach. He posted a 137-89-1 record as Seattle's sideline boss and helped the club make two Super Bowl appearances, winning one in February 2014.

The Seahawks made the playoffs during the 2022 season but lost to the San Francisco 49ers in the wild-card round. Seattle hasn't won a postseason game since the 2019 campaign.

Carroll isn't sure if he sees himself coaching again at the moment.

"I've got plenty of energy for it and thought and willingness, but I can't imagine there's a place, the right one. I don't know," he said. "I'm open to everything, but I'm not holding my breath on that. There's a lot of world out here that I'm excited about challenging and going after."

Seattle hasn't officially requested interviews with any potential head coaching candidates.