RENTON — Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll was fired by two NFL teams in part because of how his teams finished.
Fifteen years after the Patriots became the second NFL club to relieve Carroll of his duties in five seasons, however, his ability to have a team peaking at the right time is perhaps the biggest reason to be bullish on this year’s Seahawks despite a few early-season hiccups and the upcoming tough slate of games that await the defending champs.
When Carroll became a head coach for the first time in 1994, he, as he can now admit, didn’t really know what he was doing, but still led the Jets to an encouraging 6-5 start. New York would lose its final five games, however, leading to Carroll’s firing after just one season.
After a two years in San Francisco as a defensive coordinator, Carroll got another chance to be a head coach in New England, but in his third season there, the Patriots faltered down the stretch, going 2-6 after a 6-2 start, leading to another firing.
So maybe it’s not a surprise that after reinventing himself at USC, one of Carroll’s go-to mantras became, “It’s not how you start; it’s how you finish.” While fine-tuning his coaching philosophy in the college ranks, Carroll built teams that, almost without exception, got better as the season went on. That’s a trend that has continued with the Seahawks since Carroll’s second year in Seattle.
There are many theories for why Carroll’s teams tend to improve as the year goes on, but regardless of which one you subscribe to, it’s hard to argue with the numbers. Carroll’s USC teams tended to be very good all season long, but they still got better late, going 44-10 in the first half of the season from 2001-2009, and 53-9 in the second half and bowl games. That trend has continued in Seattle, with Carroll’s teams going 17-15 in the first half from 2010-2013, and 24-13 in the second half and postseason.
So while the Seahawks haven’t been as dominant this season as most were expecting, and even though the schedule is brutal down the stretch, beginning with Sunday’s game at Kansas City, there’s reason to believe the Seahawks will finish strong.
“He does a great job of feeling out the players, knowing when we’re hurting, when we need time to recover, when we need more time to rest,” said receiver Doug Baldwin, who also played against Carroll-coached teams in college. “He does a great job of listening to us and helping us out with that, then he also pushes us when we need to be pushed. He’s got a good equation for that, a good process that maximizes our efforts down the stretch.”
Carroll believes his teams’ strong finishes are tied to something that happens earlier in the season. One of his changes in coaching philosophy that occurred at USC was that he became open to the idea of playing freshmen. Like a lot of coaches, Carroll used to subscribe to the belief that rookies in the NFL and freshmen in college weren’t ready to play, but with the Trojans he began opening up the competition to everyone.
That not only helped his teams get the best players on the field, it helped build depth when injuries inevitably would occur, and it would help those young players be ready when they had to step in in big moments as the season went along.
This season, the Seahawks have had to lean on young players like Tharold Simon, Justin Britt, Marcus Burley, Brock Coyle, Kevin Pierre-Louis, Paul Richardson, Kevin Norwood and others. Now as the Seahawks slowly get healthier, their depth is that much better, and they’re that much better equipped to handle injuries should more occur down the stretch.
“I’ve watched that, because going back, we have had tremendous success late in the season for all those years down in L.A., and I tried to figure out why, because we were really proud of it and it was a big staple in the program,” Carroll said. “We talked about it and anticipated it and all of that. We have seen pretty good finishes here too, so the only really concrete reason that I have is that we play so many young guys early that by the time we get to midseason those guys are regular players for us, and it’s helped our depth situation.
“It has helped our roster as we get into the latter part of the season for two counts — one, that those guys are more ready to play as first-line players, and it’s also by the rotations; other guys have not had to play quite as much and they’re a bit stronger. We’re so committed to playing young players — it’s not a very concrete thought — but that’s one thing I know that we’ve done with intent and we’ve seen and felt that.”
Another theory for the late-season success of Carroll’s teams is that they don’t change who they are when the stakes are raised. Sure these upcoming games against the Cardinals and 49ers might determine who wins the NFC West, but if a team can, as Carroll preaches, treat every week like a championship week, players are less likely to be over-hyped or nervous or whatever else can lead to a poor performance when it matters most.
“I think it’s just our routine,” said linebacker Malcolm Smith, who also played for Carroll at USC. “We don’t really change throughout the year. We’re not changing based on the team we’re playing as far as our practice schedule. We just continue to get better at the fundamentals, the simple stuff we focus on — the turnovers, the tackling. Some teams might get away, they might get out of practice, they might not do tackling drills anymore, we still do all that stuff. So I just think it’s the routine.”
Whatever the reason, be it the team’s routine, its commitment to playing young players or Carroll’s ability to gauge when his players need rest and when they need to be pushed, it’s hard to argue with the results. Almost without fail since he reinvented himself at USC, Carroll’s teams finish strong, which is very encouraging news for a team that’s about to start a daunting stretch of games to close out the season.
Herald Columnist John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com
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