Pete Carroll wants to “Win Forever,” so he wrote a book about it. I have never read the book, but I assume he talks about his will and determination to succeed at Southern Cal and how he built a college football dynasty that lasted for the better part of the last decade.
He is now trying to do the same in Seattle during his third stint as an NFL coach, and results have been varied.
His overall record is just 9-12, but includes a division championship and a playoff victory.
He has made well over 300 official roster moves since arriving in Seattle prior to the 2010 season, completely changed the culture and is slowly but surely eradicating all semblance of the previous Tim Ruskell regime.
And for what?
To most Seahawk fans the insinuated idea was to tank the 2011 season, grab the quarterback of the future in the draft and build from there.
To Pete Carroll – it’s to win now.
It’s easy to see why Seattle fans had the perception of a franchise looking to tank it. But in reality, Carroll is walking one of the most difficult lines in any professional sport — rebuilding a broken program while trying to be competitive in the present.
In 2011 the Hawks are sitting at 2-3. An ugly record on the surface, but put into context, it’s impressive enough considering the perception around the franchise coming out of the pre-season.
Tarvaris Jackson started to light up the Atlanta secondary in the second half of their home loss to the Falcons, and took the momentum straight to New York for a road upset of the Giants. The Browns, Bengals and four more NFC West match-ups fill out Seattle’s relatively favorable schedule, and a six or seven-wins season is conceivable.
Great? No. Terrible? Definitely not.
It’s easy enough to blow up the entire program. And with moves such as the ones Seattle enacted when they let franchise mainstays Lofa Tatupu and Matt Hasselbeck walk, signaled that was the direction the Hawks were headed in. But in reality those moves were a perfect balance between competitiveness in the present and not hampering what the team is capable of in the future.
For example, Matt Hasselbeck signed a three-year deal with the Titans with dollar figures that push $21 million. Tarvaris Jackson signed a two-year deal with Seattle that totals $8 million.
While we whine about Tarvaris’ lack of polished talent, the fact is that Seattle paid what equates to pocket change for starting quarterbacks in the NFL for a player who gives the team incredible flexibility.
Tarvaris is also completing more than 60 percent of his passes, and has scored five offensive touchdowns since Seattle went to a consistent hurry up offense against Arizona.
Seattle is getting their money’s worth at the position in solid but not great production while keeping the door open for the future.
Throughout the rest of the 2011 season we are going to see the evolution of the Carroll/John Schneider program. We are going to see the youngest offensive line in football, including three players drafted in the last two years by Carroll, progress into a unit that will lead Seattle into the future.
We are going to see a young Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor develop into one of the best young safety tandems in the league.
We are going to see Doug Baldwin, Zach Miller, Mike Williams and Sidney Rice continue to prove Seattle has a dangerous set of receivers.
We are going to see a team scrap and fight and get better each week and prove that there is a method to the madness that is Pete Carroll.