Pete Carroll’s, Seahawks’ crucial part of each NFL combine isn’t on TV. Or about football

Pete Carroll settled into his team’s suite inside Lucas Oil Stadium — then got right to his favorite part of the NFL combine.

It’s not the prime-time television attractions of 40-yard dashes, shuttle runs, and quarterbacks throwing.

The most important Seahawks event at each NFL combine is not on TV. It’s not open to the media, or fans.

On the first night of the league’s annual scouting extravaganza this week, before any player had reached a field or a weight bench, Carroll and his staff met with the select defensive linemen and linebackers. They were part of the 45 formal, 18-minute interviews each team gets with prospects at the combine.

The one question the 71-year-old head coach loves to ask each college player every year here: How many sports did you play growing up, and what did you get out of those varied experiences?

“I love that question. It’s one of the first things I’m interested in,” Carroll said, speaking Tuesday inside the Indiana Convention Center. “I want to hear the guy’s story, where he came from through his sports experience. And I’m just always asking those questions and digging into that.

“It gives me an insight to the makeup and the background and the expanse of his experience, and kind of what that might bring to us. So it’s always been crucially important to me.”

Carroll and the Seahawks don’t want guys who’ve played only football. They don’t want players who have been groomed specifically through tackle leagues and the ubiquitous 7-on-7 showcase camps from age 8 through high school and college football amid America’s monetization and specialization of youth sports.

Carroll believes he and his Seahawks are unique in what they ask in their combine interviews.

“I don’t hear other guys asking all those questions as much as I know I do,” Carroll said. “Maybe guys get worn out by it, but I want to know what position he played in Little League — and what happened, you know, how’d that go? What kind of a guard were you in when you’re playing hoops? Were you a slasher or an assists guy?

“I want to know all that stuff. Did you play center field, or not? I want to know those things, because they give me insights to guys.

“It’s one of the reasons that I despise the fact that guys don’t play multiple sports in high school. You know, so many of our guys will say, ‘Hey, what’d you play? I played basketball until ninth grade.’ It kills me. They stopped playing and missed all of those competitive opportunities, and all of that. Those locker rooms and those meetings and those challenges, and those last minutes, and all of those things that make up the character, I think that of what a competitor is.

“And so it’s, it’s vitally important to me. I don’t know about anyone else.”

In a good year, these combine interviews — the formal ones in the stadium, the informal ones in hallways of the JW Marriott and Crowne Plaza hotel in downtown Indianapolis — lead to Seattle choosing the players in the following month’s draft.

Jalen Carter’s exit

Learning more about each NFL draft prospect’s background and personality returned to prominence this week when University of Georgia defensive lineman Jalen Carter, projected by some to be the number-one pick in this year’s draft, left Indianapolis Tuesday night before any combine workouts.

That was after the Athens-Clarke County Police Department in Georgia issued a warrant for Carter’s arrest on charges of reckless driving and racing related to a crash that killed his Georgia Bulldogs teammate Devin Willock and football recruiting staffer Chandler LeCroy Jan. 15. The announcement of the warrant came hours after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Carter was present at the crash scene then gave changing accounts of the wreck to police.

Time will tell whether Carter remains the top-five pick he’s been expected to be. The Seahawks hold the fifth-overall choice in April’s draft, and four selections in the first 52 picks.

General manager John Schneider said his team’s recent misses in drafts — most notably 2017 top pick Malik McDowell, who never played for Seattle after a mysterious ATV accident soon after the Seahawks drafted him despite pre-draft red flags — then hitting big last year in a 2022 class are related to the Seahawks’ emphasis on interviews of players and learning about their character.

Last year Seattle drafted what became four rookie starters, six major contributors in their debut years and Pro Bowl cornerback Tariq Woolen.

The Seahawks’ quest to learn who prospects truly are is an extensive process. It begins 11 months or more before each draft. It continues through the combine, through prospects’ Pro Days on college campuses in March and the virtual and teleconference meetings each team now gets with players up to draft day.

“It started last spring. Our area guys do a phenomenal job concentrating on character,” Schneider said. “We’ve really focused on who that person is.

“Like I said, some of the mistakes we’ve made is not necessarily being correct on the person as much as you could possibly be correct, if you will.

“So, you know, the guys start in May, probably about two, three weeks after the draft with all their contacts, coaches, equipment, guys, trainers, everybody. Yeah, we’re getting questions answered. We just met for three weeks. So now we’re coming here (to Indianapolis). We have a whole list of questions we want to get answered. And then we’ll get more questions from our conversations here.

“And we’ll carry that all the way through until the end of April.”

A by-product to the NFL canceling the 2021 combine because of the coronavirus pandemic was the league allowing teams to talk to prospects remotely. Now that the combine is back, teams still get to do that, post-pandemic.

“Maybe one of the cooler things that came from that time period, absolutely,” Schneider said. “And, you know, on Saturdays and Sundays, we still are in there with a big, old-school speakerphone. It doesn’t have a camera on it. You just hit the speaker thing. And calling guys up talking to him. You know, just kind of catching them off-guard.

“It’s fun. You get to know the guys a lot.”

Seahawks’ recent character picks

Carroll and Schneider knew this time last season top pick Charles Cross, second-round choice Boye Mafe, third-round pick Abe Lucas were their kind of guys. They knew Lucas was one of seven children in an ultra-competitive family in south Everett, near the border with Mill Creek.

They knew Woolen was raw. But they felt through talking to him he had the drive and determination at Texas-San Antonio to bull through changing positions from wide receiver to cornerback there midway through his college career.

They knew through their pre-draft interviews with Jordyn Brooks in 2020 that he was briefly homeless growing up as one of seven children. Schneider said Brooks’ mother of those seven children including twins, Lynn Brooks, “is a real rock” and “incredible.”

The Seahawks made Brooks their first-round pick three years ago. He’s now their starting inside linebacker. He’s the team record holder for tackles in a season. He’s replaced departed Bobby Wagner as the defensive signal caller.

“The curiosity just keeps pushing us to make sure that we uncover whatever we need to know,” Carroll said. “And these areas of guys, some of the guys are so clear it’s obvious who they are or where they come from, the background, their makeup and all that.

“The interviews we did (this past week in Indianapolis) were an incredible array of meeting young guys and hearing where they are and life and what they’re doing. You can gain a lot. ...

“This is a huge time.”