No one comes out clean in Seahawks’ dirty doings

Paul Allen is a dirtbag.

And that’s meant in the best possible way. The way Jim Mora meant it.

“You’ve got to be a little bit of a dirtbag,” Mora said three weeks ago, in one of those weird and pathetic state-of-the-team Q-and-As that more or less defined his days as coach of the Seattle Seahawks. “Because in the pit where all that stuff goes down, man, if you don’t have some frickin’ tough- ness, you’re going to fail, you know?”

Of course, Mora was talking about offensive linemen, just one of many units under his command that wasn’t nasty enough to suit him.

Turns out the nasty worked upstairs.

In the kind of cold-blooded ambush rarely witnessed in Seattle’s huggy sports scene, Mora was fired Friday after barely a year as head coach – summoned to a morning meeting where he presumed he was going to be asked for input on the Seahawks’ search for a president and general manager.

The news was delivered by CEO Tod Leiweke, but it almost certainly was ordered by Allen who, having endured not all that long ago the bankrolling of a civic disgrace of a basketball team in Portland, couldn’t have been pleased that the football franchise he rescued had become a punch line in his hometown.

Barely a month ago, on the occasion of president/GM Tim Ruskell getting the heave-ho, Leiweke said he “fully expected” that Mora would return for a second year. But that was before the Seahawks, who hadn’t beaten a quality opponent all year, quit like poltroons three Sundays running. Before Mora’s weekly post-mortems promising ruthless changes became eye-rolling vaudeville. Before three of his underperforming receivers went on the radio and engaged in an embarrassing smack-off with a full-of-himself ex-quarterback in the station’s employ.

And before Allen got wind that USC coach Pete Carroll, after years of playing footsy with several NFL teams, was ready to be bought.

Four years removed from their lone Super Bowl appearance and acclaim as one of the NFL’s model franchises, the Seahawks have relocated to Dysfunction Junction.

Consider that Leiweke and a small entourage was reportedly in Los Angeles at Allen’s behest earlier this week to meet with Carroll, suggesting that Mora would still be employed had Petey not given off signals that he could be hooked with the right bait – that being the role of president as well as coach.

Now that’s dirtbagging.

No particular tears need be shed for Mora, who will console himself with the nearly $12 million still due him. It was impossible to understand Ruskell’s man-crush on him in the first place. What had Mora accomplished in three years as head coach in Atlanta that made it so urgent that a line of succession be established so as to nudge Mike Holmgren toward the door?

Whatever abilities he had as a coach always seemed to be overshadowed by the calamity created by his mouth – while employed by the Falcons, he went on radio in Seattle and declared his “dream job” to be with the University of Washington. Even the humorous dirtbag dissertation was gratuitous disrespect toward both his players and his superiors, and may well have wilted Leiweke’s endorsement.

Still, he wasn’t going to work miracles in 12 months with a Seahawks roster as spent, brittle and modestly gifted as the one he inherited. And if he was such a disappointment, then the blame belongs as much to Allen and Leiweke, who signed off on the charade.

The Keystone Hawks.

The Carroll romance is hardly any more encouraging. Yes, he turned USC football back into the college royalty it was in days of yore, though the robes frayed a bit this season. And if he’s getting out ahead of the NCAA posse or tired of working for a weasel like Mike Garrett, that’s of little concern to the Seahawks.

But he got bum’s-rushed himself after a single season with the New York Jets and took a Super Bowl franchise in New England due south 10 years ago. Now the Seahawks are willing to accord him the Grand Omnipotent Stomper job they once had to wrest away from Holmgren because it wasn’t working out – and the money and clout they wouldn’t give Holmgren to return as president when public sentiment forced them into an (insincere) offer two weeks ago.

What happened to Leiweke’s insistence that he was in search of an executive to fit in with what the Allen team was doing and not the reverse?

Apparently, dirtbags don’t deal in absolutes. Panic, yes, but not absolutes.