Lincoln Riley hopes to one day coach in the second week of January. He has reached the College Football Playoffs four times — three as a head coach, once as an offensive coordinator — but he has never won a semifinal and earned a berth in the national championship game.
A USC coach will be coaching deep into January, however. Pete Carroll will coach an NFL game on Saturday, January 14, when the Seattle Seahawks face the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Wild Card Game in Santa Clara.
The Seahawks clinched a playoff berth Sunday night when the Green Bay Packers lost to the Detroit Lions. The Packers just had to beat their longtime NFC North punching bag to make the postseason and lock the Seahawks out, but a motivated Detroit team with nothing to lose was able to ruin the Packers’ season.
The Seahawks accepted the enormous gift from the Motor City.
In a season when the Seahawks took the field with journeyman quarterback Geno Smith as their starter — after having him hold a clipboard and watch Russell Wilson play for the past three seasons (2019-2021) — the expectation around the NFL was that Seattle would win only five or six games.
Here are the Seahawks, in the playoffs.
One other note: Pete Carroll has made the playoffs in 10 of his 13 seasons in Seattle. His only misses since he took over the Seahawks in 2010: the 2011 season, 2017, and then 2021, Russell Wilson’s tumultuous final year.
It’s true that in some ways, Pete Carroll hasn’t evolved. In many ways, he didn’t tailor the Seahawks’ offense to Russell Wilson. His hire of Brian Schottenheimer as offensive coordinator was a big mistake. He doesn’t have Bill Belichick’s ability to mold a team in many different ways, sometimes winning with a wide-open offense and other times leaning on his defense. Carroll relies so much on one style of play, one way of winning, which has limited his options and lowered the ceiling of some of his teams over the years. He does have some flaws. We can acknowledge that.
Yet, as a teacher of the game — getting young players to not only buy into a vision, but understand the sport — Carroll truly shines. He guided a lot of rookies through this season. He made Geno Smith work. His hire of Shane Waldron as offensive coordinator has repaired the franchise. He now has a young team which will get a taste of the playoffs and will learn so much about how to compete in the years ahead.
Pete Carroll can still coach. USC fans are certainly happy to see him succeed.
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