Surprising Seahawks run shows Pete Carroll’s way works. Oh, he loves proving you wrong

They said he was washed up.

Trading Russell Wilson? Cutting Bobby Wagner? On the same day? Coming off his second non-playoff season in 10 years? Believing in Geno Smith to replace Wilson?

Pete Carroll was all wrong, they said. The Seahawks won’t win five games, they said.

Who was “they”? Pretty much everyone not named Pete Carroll.

One redemptive regular season later, seven-year backup Smith is in the Pro Bowl. Wilson is vacationing after a 5-12 season for Denver that was the worst of his career.

And Seattle is in the playoffs. Yet again.

“Everybody is already in Cancún, but we still get to play,” said outside linebacker Uchenna Nwosu, whom Carroll turned loose to freelance off the edge into a career-high 10 sacks to lead the defense.

“Everyone didn’t expect us to do what we were going to do,” Shelby Harris said Tuesday.

The 31-year-old, eighth-year veteran arrived from Denver in March as part of Seattle’s trade of Wilson. Harris has never played in a postseason game. He’s never been on a team that finished with a winning record.

Until now.

Pete Carroll wasn’t wrong. He was all right.

And, oh, yes, the 71-year-old coach is getting a kick out of proving everyone wrong.

“Yes, of course. Heck, yeah. I love doing that,” Carroll said this week before Saturday’s massive test for his Seahawks (9-8) at the NFC West-champion San Francisco 49ers (13-4).

“I have no problem with that. I don’t mind telling you that.”

He smiled.

His system still works

This season — as much or more than any of his 13 leading the Seahawks and 17 years as a head coach in the NFL — has proven Carroll’s system works. His rah-rah, all-in ways, his free-throw contests, rap stars at practice, loving up players, wearing Air Monarch dad shoes, wanting to run the ball like its 1960, it all works.

It works no matter who is quarterbacking his team.

It also doesn’t matter that Carroll changed the 4-3 system he’d been coaching since the 1970s to a more varied, faster 3-4 for this season.

Or that five rookies are starting. Of the 22 Seahawks that will start on offense and defense Saturday at San Francisco, 11 will be playing in their first NFL playoff game.

No matter how far they go in these playoffs, this Seahawks team has validated Carroll and his ways.

And, get this: Thanks to general manager John Schneider fleecing Denver while trading Wilson and the QB then flopping with the Broncos this season, the Seahawks have the fifth-overall pick in this spring’s draft, Denver’s top pick. It’s the highest selection for a team that just made the playoffs in 20 years.

“I just talked the way I talk and just do our thing here,” Carroll said. “The newer guys ... they just needed to catch up with us.

“To find your way to creating a culture, you’re constantly, constantly on it. And you’re forever teaching and directing and pointing out and learning and growing and expanding and all that stuff. Always. It doesn’t stop. It’s not like you give them a message and: OK, here it goes. And you have to tweak along the way to meet up to the style and the makeup of the players and the coaches and all that.

“The trust thing, I feel like I have to prove it to them. I’m constantly proving to our guys why they can believe in this and that and why they can believe in themselves and why they can believe on the guy next to them. I’ve really been on that bent for a long time, of trying to prove that they’re capable of whatever we can imagine them to become.

“It’s constant.”

Pete Carroll energized

This season clearly energized the coach born in San Francisco when Harry Truman was president. That was 1951.

As usual, he ran from goal line to goal line, 100 yards, as his players did kickoff-coverage drills. But this season it appeared he did more of them, and faster.

He was in the middle of the blocking pads during the team’s daily bag drill that begins each practice. He exhorted his players like it was the practice before the high school state championship, not another grinding NFL workout on a Wednesday in August or November.

This season, Carroll answered the challenge he and Schneider created for the Seahawks last offseason.

“You picked up on that,” Carroll said. “I didn’t do it for that reason. I didn’t think I needed a kick in the butt to get fired up. But it was a natural challenge. There’s a lot more unknown.

“It’s enthralling for me to try to find the ways to make sense to put together what you’ve got to put together and to match it up right and try to minimize the false steps and the miscues that get in the way. And it’s more likely when you’re younger that stuff’s going to happen. Bud Grant tried to teach me a long time ago, teach us all a long time ago: It’s hard to do it with rookies.

“So I’ve been fighting.”

Kenneth Walker, Seattle’s second-round pick, is likely to become the NFL offensive rookie of the year for his 1,050 yards rushing this regular season. Walker joined Curt Warner from 1983 as the only Seahawks rookies to rush for 1,000 yards. And Walker didn’t become the team’s lead back until midway through the fifth game, in October after Rashaad Penny’s season-ending injury.

Carroll made first-round pick Charles Cross on the left and third-round choice Abe Lucas on the right the third pair of rookie offensive tackles to start for a team in Week 1 of an NFL season in 52 years. They have massively improved Seattle’s pass protection from the 2021 season.

Carroll decided in August that fifth-round pick Tariq Woolen was going to start from Game 1 at cornerback. Woolen, tall and long in Carroll’s Richard Sherman mold, faster than anyone the coach has ever seen at Woolen’s 6-foot-4 size, made the Pro Bowl. He and New York Jets cornerback Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner are the top candidates for NFL defensive rookie of the year.

Carroll made fourth-round pick Coby Bryant the team’s fifth, nickel defensive back. At an intricate position of pass coverage and run support, Bryant has played as much as 75% of the defensive snaps. He became the first NFL player with four forced fumbles in his first six career games.

“One of the things I love trying to prove that you can do — all the way back to USC we were trying to do that — try to play young guys and make them fit in. There’s some big upside to that,” Carroll said.

“I might be fighting this fight all by myself, but I’m going to keep doing it.”

Not satisfied with 9-8

Yet Carroll is not satisfied with this season. He’s mad his Seahawks aren’t 11-6 or 12-5. He doesn’t think they should be a seventh seed in the seven-team NFC playoffs, having to play at second-seeded San Francisco.

He’s still thinking about the galling home losses to Carolina and Las Vegas. About not showing up for the first three quarters against Tampa Bay in Munich.

“I think it’s been really frustrating. We were close enough to win two or three more games, anyway,” he said. “One game would have made a difference. As much as the outlook from the outside was different than what ours is, we expect to do more.

“It’s good to have a winning record. But: ‘Let’s go out and have a winning record’? That’s not my goal. That’s not what I’m reaching out for.

“We’re fortunate that we got it done under the circumstances and all that. We’ll take it. But we had higher expectations. That’s why I couldn’t go along with all the talk about rebuilding and all that stuff. It just doesn’t jibe with me. I don’t know why you would ever make that concession, ever. I don’t get it. Just go for it.

“And so we did.”

After four years playing for him, DK Metcalf has internalized Carroll’s messages. But the 25-year-old wide receiver doesn’t want to talk about proving people wrong this season.

“No, I think last year I stopped focusing on that,” he said. “Don’t got anything to prove to anybody. Just prove yourself right and everything else fall into place.”

Metcalf says that’s what his Seahawks did in the regular season.

“Proved ourselves right. We knew what we were doing, and we were setting out to at least make the playoffs this year,” he said.

“But every team’s goal is to win the Super Bowl. We finished step one. Now, just continue on this road to the Super Bowl.”

Seattle’s future

Even before the Detroit Lions upset the Packers in Green Bay Sunday night to get the Seahawks into the playoffs, even if this Seahawks season ends Saturday against the 49ers, Carroll believes Seattle now has the foundation of another championship team. The brotherhood, the youthful exuberance, the young players getting this playoff experience, it’s all coming full circle for the coach who champions the intangibles to find his edge.

It’s what Carroll, Wilson, Wagner, Sherman, Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor, Doug Baldwin and the Seahawks felt when they lost bitterly late at Atlanta in the playoffs to end the 2012 season.

The 2013 and ‘14 Seahawks seasons ended in the Super Bowl.

“I feel this is the kind of nucleus you have to have to build around it and add to it,” Carroll said this week. “Trust is a big word for us today in this conversation here. I trust these guys that they’re going to give me everything they’ve got every time they go. And they’re going to find a way. And if they don’t, they’re going to be pissed at themselves that they didn’t get that done.

“They’re really in it for the right reasons and all. And that’s all I ask for. We’ve got speed and we’ve got talent and we’ve got quarterbacks and receivers. We’ve got some stuff.

“So there’s a lot to build on here. And the future looks bright because of all that.”