SEATTLE — At one point early in his tenure as the Seattle Seahawks’ offensive coordinator, Darrell Bevell was approached by head coach Pete Carroll, and the topic of conversation was Bevell’s future, perhaps as a head coach.
Bevell wasn’t sure what to make of his current boss bringing up the topic of him someday leaving in order to move up the coaching ranks.
“The first time I was a little surprised, just because of where I’d been — it wasn’t kind of that way,” Bevell said. “The first time he comes in your office and starts speaking about it, you’re like, ‘Is he trying to get rid of me? What’s going on here? This is kind of weird.’ But it’s great to have someone who supports you in that way.”
While the Seahawks are still playing, 20 NFL teams saw their season end Sunday, and a handful of those teams fired their coaches, or in the case of San Francisco “mutually” parted ways with him. That means top assistant coaches, people like Seahawks defensive coordinator Dan Quinn, offensive line coach/assistant head coach Tom Cable and Bevell will become candidates for open jobs.
Already the Seahawks have received requests from three teams — the 49ers, Jets and Falcons — about Quinn, who reportedly will interview with the 49ers on Wednesday in Seattle and the Jets on Friday. New York is also scheduled to interview Cable while on that same trip, as well as Seahawks director of pro personnel Trent Kirchner, a candidate for the Jets’ general manager job.
Bevell’s name hasn’t surfaced yet, but considering he has interviewed for head coaching jobs each of the past two seasons, there’s a good chance one of the team’s with a vacancy will be asking the Seahawks about him soon.
As a quick aside, don’t panic about Seattle’s coaches preparing for job interviews while also preparing for a playoff game. Both Bevell and Quinn interviewed for multiple jobs at this time last year, and somehow managed to focus on their current jobs well enough to help Seattle win a Super Bowl.
Not only is Carroll OK with his assistants pursing jobs, he hopes they leave. Because as much as Carroll’s primary goal in Seattle is to win football games, he also sees a responsibility to help everyone, not just his player, be the best they can be. And if that means losing a top assistant or two every couple of years, so be it.
“When these guys come to work here, I tell them from the moment we start talking that I’m going to help them get any job that they want and to help them achieve the goal that they have for themselves,” Carroll said. “I work really hard for our guys to get whatever it is that they’re after, and it doesn’t always work out that way that they get the jobs they want, but I really mean that. I want them to be the best they can possibly be, and if I can help them do that then I’m going to do it.”
Carroll learned early in his tenure at USC that a successful program leads to other teams poaching your assistants. Coaches like Ed Orgeron, Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian all left USC for head jobs elsewhere, then in 2013 Seahawks defensive coordinator Gus Bradley became the head coach at Jacksonville. But even if losing coaches isn’t ideal, the flip side is that their potential replacements know they’re coming to a place that will help them to move on when the opportunity comes.
“I know that, at times, it makes it hard at times on us, but I want the next guy coming in to know the exact same thing,” Carroll said. “If you come here, we’re going to help you be the best that you could possibly be and that doesn’t mean it comes during recommendation time, this is in the process of trying to help guys find their best manners, the best way, their best understanding of how to present their philosophy and their approach so we work with that throughout the year.
“In my mind, everybody is going, everybody is moving on, and I’m hoping that they get those chances. I’ve been that way for a long time and we’ve endured it, it’s worked out, and it gives us a great chance to really have a great place for someone to come to also. I wish it would have been like that for me — sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn’t and I just decided a long time ago that I was going to help our guys in that manner.”
Seattle’s assistants don’t just appreciate that their employer won’t deny them a chance to pursue a new job, but that Carroll actively tries to prepare them to be head coaches while they are here.
“He’s always constantly challenging us,” Quinn said, “Think of this two-minute situation, think of this — and he’s often times putting us as coaches against each other in that scenario, where we do tons of two-minute work, all the stuff that we do against each other, offensively and defensively; he’s constantly challenging us. It’s one of the fun parts about being a coach on his staff.”
Quinn has left the Seahawks once before, going to Florida to be the Gators’ defensive coordinator after two seasons as Seattle’s defensive line coach. He returned as defensive coordinator in 2013 after Bradley left not just because being defensive coordinator in the NFL was a good job, but also because he knew that by coming back to Seattle, he’d be playing for a coach who might someday help him leave again.
“One of the great parts of being part of this organization is with him is we look to him as a mentor and somebody that we learn from all the time,” Quinn said. “So just being part of this organization and watching the guy interact with the team, help develop the coaches, to help develop the players, he’s been a huge impact on the philosophy; coaching wise, philosophy wise, it’s a blast working him with him. It really is.”
Herald Columnist John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com
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