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Seattle Seahawks

Pete Carroll has no interest in coaching Rams

FILE - Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll looks on from the sideline in the first half of an NFL football game against the San Francisco 49ers, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2016, in Seattle. (Ted S. Warren / Associated Press)
By Bob Condotta Seattle Times

Pete Carroll’s ties to Los Angeles have led to some inevitable speculation connecting him to the suddenly open coaching vacancy of the Rams. Specifically, a Yahoo.com story Tuesday morning reported that the Rams’ ownership group would love to hire Carroll.

But the story also uses the word “ungettable” to describe the Rams’ chances with Carroll and notes that he would be an “exceptionally difficult coach to reel in, maybe as close to impossible as a candidate could be outside of the New England Patriots’ Bill Belichick.”

Carroll himself tried to quash the speculation with a one-word answer Tuesday morning when he spoke to reporters who cover the Rams on a conference call to preview Thursday’s game between Los Angeles and Seattle at CenturyLink Field.

Asked if he could rule out that he would have any interest in coaching the Rams, Carroll said “yes.”

Someone might argue that that’s all anyone would expect Carroll to say at this point.

But all available facts also point against any Carroll move to the Rams.

For one, Carroll signed an extension with Seattle through 2019 prior to the season. That means the Seahawks could ask the Rams for compensation, such as when the Raiders received two first-round picks and two second-round picks from Tampa Bay for allowing Jon Gruden to move from Oakland to the Bucs.

Carroll, who turned 65 in September, also signed a deal that takes him through what could logically be viewed as the rest of the peak years of many of Seattle’s current key players, such as Russell Wilson, Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor, Richard Sherman and Michael Bennett.

Carroll also signed his contract after the Seahawks re-upped general manager John Schneider though the 2021 season, which was no coincidence. Carroll wanted to assure Schneider was in the fold first and then sign his own new deal so there was no question about Schneider’s future with the team. Carroll has talked often and enthusiastically of his working relationship with Schneider and how that differentiates his Seattle experience from his earlier head coaching jobs with the Jets (1994) and Patriots (1997-99).

Then there is the issue of the Rams being in full rebuild mode and the Seahawks still being at a Super Bowl-contending level. The odds of Carroll wanting to turn the Seahawks over to someone else to take on rebuilding at this stage of his career would seem remote.

That Carroll had of his greatest coaching success in Los Angeles with USC, and has kept ties to the city through his A Better LA organization makes it a natural to link Carroll to the Rams. But little about it makes sense and Carroll Tuesday appeared to try to end the talk for good.