Pete Carroll, as he often is, was asked about his relationship with 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh and their alleged bad blood, which stems back 2009 when Harbaugh’s Stanford Cardinal blew out Carroll’s USC Trojans, and decided to go for a two-point conversion late in the game. That led to the famous “what’s your deal?” postgame handshake, but since the two have taken over rival teams in the NFL, both continue to downplay the idea that there’s animosity between the two.
Carroll got a little chuckle out of the question, which ended “what’s the deal now with you guys?”
“What’s the deal, huh?” Carroll said. ‘We have not been friends over the years because we don’t know each other very well. We just know each other through the game, through when we used to coach against him back when he was playing, and since we’ve coached against each other. It’s a very confined relationship in that regard. For whatever reason you guys have had a field day with think that it’s something other than it is. I have great respect for what Jim has done. I think he’s a tremendous football coach. I don’t know him very well personally, so that it. That’s where it starts and stops, and all the rest of the stuff has really been… you guys have had a blast with it, but there’s nothing there. That’s it.”
Harbaugh has similarly downplayed the idea of a Carroll-Harbaugh feud this week, telling reporters: “Animosity? No. Erroneous. Erroneous. It’s football. It’s competition. It’s winning. Football. Competition. Winning. That’s the sport. That’s what we’ve had, great competition.”
Anyway, looks like everybody’s playing nice this week. Too bad for us. Now, onto the injury stuff. The big question this week is whether Percy Harvin will be cleared to return from a concussion, and the answer Thursday is… wait for it… they still don’t know. Harvin won’t practice again Thursday, but his status beyond that remains a mystery.
“He’s still going through the protocol, and we don’t know,” Carroll said. “We don’t know anything yet.”
Asked if there was a deadline to make a call on Harvin, Carroll said, “There’s a deadline from the doctors whenever they call it. They’re the ones who are really in charge of this thing at this point, and I don’t know when that is. They’ve got to go through the process.”
“It’s a whole process they got through, no indication to help you understand more, because I don’t know any more than that.”
Linebacker K.J. Wright will practice again after being limited Wednesday. He’s trying to get back from a fractured foot that has kept him out since last month’s game in San Francisco.
“He’s done fine so far,” Carroll said. “Today will be a big day for him. He was limited yesterday. He looked like there were no problems, but we’ll have to wait and see.”
The good news for Seattle is that Malcolm Smith has played very well in Wright’s absence, meaning the Seahawks won’t feel like they have to rush Wright back if he’s not ready.
“Malcolm’s played really well,” Carroll said. “We don’t feel like we have to have (Wright) back to force the issue. If he can go he can go. If he’s ready to play in the football game and we’re dressing him, he’s playing.”
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