What Pete Carroll said about returning to Seattle to face Seahawks

Last year might have felt too early and awkward.

By next year, too much time might have passed.

And a regular-season game would maybe have been too serious an occasion.

A preseason game roughly 19 months after Pete Carroll bade a hasty goodbye to the Seahawks seems like the appropriate setting for fans to give the best coach in franchise history the public send-off he never got at the time.

Carroll makes his return to Seattle on Thursday night in what is also his return to NFL coaching as the Las Vegas Raiders play the Seahawks at 7 p.m. at Lumen Field in the preseason opener for both teams.

Also making a return is quarterback Geno Smith, traded by Seattle to the Raiders in March after leading the Seahawks the last three seasons.

Carroll’s successor as Seahawks coach, Mike Macdonald, said there should be no question about the reception the two will receive.

“We should be cheering Pete when he gets here,” Macdonald said. “We should be cheering Geno. How could you not? We should be cheering those guys. Now when the ball is snapped, we’re going to go try to win the game. And we’re not going to be playing our starters, but we’re going to go compete like heck. I think Pete would appreciate that. I hope Pete gets a great ovation. He deserves it.”

As might be expected of a coach who made “Always Compete” one of his mantras, Carroll preferred to focus on the game rather than his return when he talked to Las Vegas media this week.

“It’s the only game we got, and it happens to be in Seattle,” he said Tuesday. “I loved my time in Seattle and love the fans and the people that we met and dealt with and competed with, but it’s a game for us. We are going to go play ball.”

Carroll even implied that the Raiders’ starters will play. “Everybody’s alive. Everybody’s ready to go,” he said.

That led some to quickly conclude Carroll wanted to show the Seahawks a little something.

Carroll’s comment, though, was then quickly clarified as meaning that the starters could play, not that they necessarily will.

And everyone who followed Carroll closely during his Seattle years knew that comment was similar to one he’d made dozens times with the Seahawks when he seemed to enjoy keeping everyone guessing about things such as who might play in a preseason game.

Macdonald, meanwhile, also clarified that some Seahawks who will end up as starters will play, notably rookies such as left guard Grey Zabel and safety Nick Emmanwori. Rookie quarterback Jalen Milroe also figures to get the bulk of the QB snaps for Seattle.

How those players perform will be the focus of the game between the lines for Seahawks fans.

But the rest of the time, most eyes will likely focus on Carroll and the odd sight of him standing on the east sideline in some combination of silver and black.

Carroll last coached a game in Lumen Field on Dec. 31, 2023, a 30-23 loss to a Pittsburgh Steelers team quarterbacked by Mason Rudolph that all but killed Seattle’s playoff hopes.

Ten days later he “amicably agreed that his role will evolve from head coach to an adviser with the (Seahawks) organization,” as stated in an official news release.

Carroll held a quickly assembled news conference an hour or so later, attended by a few players such as Smith and Bobby Wagner, conducted a couple other radio interviews that week, and then for the next year or so mostly kept out of the public eye.

He was spotted a few times attending events or games involving his children or grandchildren in the Seattle area, and one night last October attended a preseason NBA game at Climate Pledge Arena, where he talked for a little while with Macdonald.

Otherwise, he was mostly invisible.

During Carroll’s year on the back burner the questions swirled – was his NFL career really done or could he find a job again that would also make him the oldest head coach in league history?

While Carroll ended up pursuing some non-football roles, such as teaching a class in the business department at USC, he said coaching again was always his goal.

“If you remember, I didn’t retire,” he said in February. “I did that purposely. I wasn’t ready to stop coaching. We had a nice agreement up there (with the Seahawks) as we turned this thing around. I was really excited for (Seahawks general manager) John Schneider to get his chance to do what he gets to do. In my mind, I was always competing for what was coming up.”

Carroll reportedly tried to get involved in the Chicago Bears’ hunt for a new head coach. But the Bears had already zeroed in on Ben Johnson as the young offensive mind the team wanted to groom second-year quarterback Caleb Williams.

That helped lead Carroll to the Raiders, who once were the “Just Win, Baby” team, but haven’t won a playoff game since appearing in the Super Bowl following the 2002 season.

When the regular season begins, Carroll will set an NFL record by becoming the oldest man in team history to coach a game.

Romeo Crennel holds the record at 73 years, 199 days with Houston in 2020. Carroll turns 74 on Sept. 15, eight days after the Raiders open the season in New England.

Rebuilding a Raiders team that has played just two playoff games since 2002 – both losses – and plays in a loaded AFC West won’t be easy.

But whatever happens in Vegas, Carroll’s place in Seahawks’ lore is secure.

He not only has the only Super Bowl title in team history but his 137 regular-season wins are 51 more than any other Seahawks coach (Mike Holmgren with 86).

And the Legion of Boom era of Seahawks football he orchestrated will forever be as interesting and entertaining as any period of time for any team in Seattle sports history.

“After it’s said and done, I feel really good about the time we spent there and that we were able to stay with what we believed in and make it work out,” Carroll said Tuesday. “So, that’s really what stands out about it.”

At the NFL combine in February, Carroll said he planned to keep a residence in the Seattle area and that he hoped to never “lose connection” with Seahawks fans.

He noted then that being forced to take the year off from coaching gave him a perspective on the impact his era of Seahawks football created in Seattle he hadn’t had before.

“They were great years,” he said then. “It’s still home to me. I never would have known, had I not been hanging around the area this year, how much of a connection we have made with the community and the people. The fans and the people that I’ve met running through the airports and in the streets, wherever we’re going, have been so gracious. And it’s had such an obvious effect on me of how we did relate through the time we were together. And I’m really grateful for that. I’m really grateful for that. I didn’t have the idea that there was that much of an exchange.”

Carroll figures to get another reminder of it Thursday night.