By Bob Condotta / The Seattle Times
RENTON — Seahawks coach Pete Carroll headed down the walkway and then up the steps to the stage of the auditorium at the VMAC for his weekly news conference Wednesday in a hurried manner that made clear this is a “no time to waste” kind of week.
Seattle’s 30-23 loss to the Steelers on Sunday means the Seahawks now have to win at Arizona this Sunday — and also hope the Bears can beat the Packers in Green Bay — or by this time next week the season will be over.
“This is the finish opportunity here for the regular season and we’ve got to get this game done,” Carroll said. “We’ve got to get what we need to get done here to have a chance to keep rolling. It isn’t about really what’s down the road, it’s about this game, right now, this time.”
But during his 17-minute meeting with the media, Carroll a few times mentioned the youth of the Seahawks and how the team remains in an overall building mode.
“I really do feel like our youth shows up,” he said in answer to a question about Seattle’s inconsistent play this season that has led to an 8-8 record with one game left and needing a win and help to get to the postseason. “That’s a positive moving forward. And as we look to the future, you can see the future of this club and it can go places and do stuff.”
And while there can be a danger in reading too much into such comments, especially with at least one game left to be played, they seemed to indicate Carroll isn’t looking at Sunday as a possible ending to anything other than the 2023 season if things don’t work out Seattle’s way.
That Seattle could miss the playoffs for the second time in three years, could finish with a losing record for the second time in three years and hasn’t advanced past the divisional round since the 2014 season has led to the inevitable conjecture about what kind of changes could be made in the offseason.
And some of that chatter inevitably finds its focus on the potential fate of Carroll, if for no other reason than his age — he turned 72 in September — and that he’s completing his 14th season with the Seahawks.
That’s the fourth-longest current coaching tenure in the NFL and four years longer than the next longest in team history, the 10 seasons of Mike Holmgren from 1999 to 2008.
Which may make it worth remembering that Carroll has two years remaining on a contract thought to pay him as much as $15 million a year (unlike NFL player contracts, coaches’ salaries are not made public).
Carroll signed that deal in 2020, with an official announcement made that November.
After the contract was revealed, Carroll said that year on his radio show that he has always viewed his career in five-year segments.
“I love what I’m doing and I love coaching in this setting right here, and hope to do it for a long time,” he said then on Seattle Sports 710. “I don’t see any reason why not. I think I’ve mentioned before, I’m kind of on the five-year plan — every year you look at it like, ‘OK, what are you going to do the next five years?’”
Wednesday, Carroll said the youth of the team has presented a challenge in the immediate and hope for the long term. Seattle has 29 players on its 53-man roster this week who are 25 years or younger, tied for the fourth most in the NFL.
“We have a lot of work to do, but the outlook for the future is very positive because of the makeup of the guys, the way they want to work, the way they go about it,” he said. “They just need to be trained and it needs to come back another year where you see all of those guys that make that jump from Year 1 to Year 2 and from Year 2 to Year 3. There’s going to be a real positive movement for our club.”
Of course, the real time for conversations about the future will come once the season is over.
But Seattle is faced with the prospect of those talks beginning as soon as Monday if things don’t break right Sunday.
Seattle’s game at Arizona will kick off at 1:25 p.m., the same time as the Bears-Packers game in Green Bay.
The Seahawks have been down this road before of playing a game while hoping that another one elsewhere is giving them the help they need. It most recently happened in 2017, when the Seahawks hosted Arizona at home while at the same time hoping at the Panthers could beat the Falcons. Seattle didn’t get the help it needed that year, with Atlanta easily beating Carolina, and the Seahawks then losing anyway, 26-24, when Blair Walsh missed a late field goal.
Carroll said Wednesday the Seahawks will keep a singular focus on the field in Glendale.
“I’m not going to be watching any of that,” he said. “We’ll see what they do about putting it on the board depending on what’s going on. It doesn’t matter. That doesn’t matter to us right now. We’ll have plenty of time to find out what happened.”
Carroll said he’s confident Seattle can do its part, vowing the Seahawks will fix some of the ills that led to the Steelers loss, specifically a leaky run defense that allowed Pittsburgh to rush for 202 yards on 46 carries.
“We’ve got to do some things better than we did,” Carroll said. “And we’ve had some times (this season) where we’ve been OK (defending the run), but we’ve got to get better. ‘How can you get better in the week?’ Well, watch. We’re going to do that. And we’re going to change a little bit of how this thing happened last week, and I’m anxious to see it come together.”
Carroll vowed to do his part, as well.
“I’m challenging the heck out of them to finish this thing,” he said. “I really didn’t listen today, I was pretty much pushing it to, ‘We have to get ready to get going and have a great Wednesday,’ and that’s all that’s important right now. I can’t imagine that they’re not totally on board to get this thing done and get this win and see where it leaves us.”
With the hope that this time next week he’s again answering questions about a game to be played that weekend and not already looking to the future.
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