Dave Boling: Where do the Seahawks, Pete Carroll go after up-and-down season

If this is the end of Pete Carroll’s brilliant tenure with the Seattle Seahawks, and that warrants discussion, it will be slightly weird, but mostly bittersweet.

Carroll’s Hawks pulled out another dramatic late comeback win on Sunday, 21-20 over Arizona, the third such rally in the last four weeks.

It has been an admirable flurry of competence that couldn’t counterbalance weeks of deeply flawed football. And the winning record and postseason near-miss can’t veil the sense that the franchise trajectory is trending downward.

In mid-November, the Hawks shared the NFC West Division lead with San Francisco at 6-3. Unable to adequately defend or tackle, the Hawks worked themselves out of the playoffs.

Now, every possible means of improvement should be on the table for Seattle’s highest decision-makers.

I hate these columns, and dread debating someone’s retention or firing.

The chorus of blame often comes from those of us who aren’t in the building, those of us who see only the surface factors. And from fans, of course.

An easy dart to throw is that Carroll is too old for the job. As a man two days older than Pete, I feel personally invested in not suggesting that he’s overdue for the pasture.

I’ve also watched him at hundreds of practices, and know that he has more energy than almost any other coach in any other league, at any other age.

I would argue that Carroll’s biggest success was instilling a rare culture of individualism in the NFL’s stodgy, collective-identity environment.

The most compelling example was the way it allowed Marshawn Lynch to go from a player considered a toxic malcontent in Buffalo into the dynamo powering a near-dynastic run for the Seahawks.

Lynch was not only an unstoppable running back, but, in an abrupt reversal, a beloved community icon. I’m convinced that Carroll was hugely responsible for that.

Maybe Carroll gets penalized at this point for the construction of unrealistic expectations. He and Schneider resisted the league’s almost inevitable forces of entropy that pull successful teams down toward the middle.

Will the critical evaluations, and job peril, be shared between Carroll and general manager John Schneider? For the most part, Schneider has seemed a genius roster-builder, except for a period of hollow drafts in the late teens that may still affect their depth of talent.

I’ve seen these crossroad moments for decades in Seattle, and they often carried a sense of inevitability. If there’s a building critical mass for change, it’s rare that the situation is salvaged with half measures.

Coach Chuck Knox wanted out so badly, because of a clash with ownership, that he already had a job with the L.A. Rams lined up. He knew a nosedive in Seattle was imminent and wanted no part of it. Nothing about it was subtle.

I was there three years later when Tom Flores, as likeable and humble as anybody in the league, came into the press room and basically fired himself. He knew better than any of us that his teams were awful, but he didn’t see much leeway to do anything about it.

It opened the way for the return of a native, Dennis Erickson, a national championship college coach who did an underappreciated job of getting the Hawks from the bottom back up to the middle.

After his four seasons, I thought it was too early to fire Erickson. He had fortunes trending upward, and had been dealt some bad luck and front-office distraction, too. But when they did, it opened the way for Mike Holmgren, who brought them their first Super Bowl appearance.

And when Paul Allen dumped Holmgren’s replacement, Jim Mora, after only a year, I wrote that it, too, appeared inappropriately abrupt.

But they had Carroll ready to jump in, a move that ushered in the franchise golden age.

Two lessons: 1) You had better have somebody who can improve things if you’re going to fire the incumbent. And 2) No one should take advice on when to fire a coach from me.

Sometimes a mandate of sacrificing a coordinator or two earns a coach extra time. That’s often only a stopgap toward the inevitable, too.

Who makes such a decision? Schneider seems inextricably bonded to Carroll.

Jody Allen? Isn’t she supposed to sell the team at some undefined point in the future? Maybe she’d rather just stick with Pete and wait for a new owner to bring in a coach.

Maybe the decision will come from Carroll. He said last week that he expects to stick around. But maybe he’ll have second thoughts. After all, it’s a young roster with holes to fill, with, perhaps, some schematic modernization required.

Carroll doesn’t seem likely to just quit a job, but he is a man of varied interests. Maybe it’s time to branch out. He would be feted like a coach who is worthy of very strong Hall of Fame discussion.

Maybe he sees that it’s time for it.

But I’m a lousy judge of such things.