Seattle Seahawks better off 2 years letting Pete Carroll go

It was just under two years ago that the Seattle Seahawks made the tough decision to move on from head coach Pete Carroll, who had led the Hawks through the most successful period in franchise history.

Looking back now, it’s hard to make any argument against it being the right call.

Playoff bracket set for Seahawks and rest of NFC

The Seahawks are NFC West champions for the first time since 2020, a No. 1 seed in the playoffs for just the fourth time ever, and will get next weekend off while the rest of the teams in the NFC side of the postseason bracket fight to determine who will join Seattle in the divisional round.

As for Carroll, he was fired Monday after his one season as Las Vegas Raiders coach resulted in a 3-14 record.

More: Ex-Seahawks coach Pete Carroll fired by Raiders

The juxtaposition of where the Seahawks and Carroll stood on Monday hammered home why Seattle made the move it did when it did, especially when you consider the Seahawks ended the year with a plus-191 point differential while the Raiders had a minus-191 point differential in 2025.

“Pete was let go. I don’t think it was a huge surprise, I think it was pretty well expected at this point after just a miserable season,” Mike Salk said Monday morning on Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk. “I think Pete didn’t need to win this year, but he couldn’t have been a joke, and I think by the end of the year – not even by the end of the year, throughout the year – the Raiders were a joke.

“… You can’t help but think and juxtapose where the Raiders and Pete are at today versus where the Seahawks are at, winning the NFC, winning the NFC West and sitting around waiting on a first round bye. They made the right call.”

In their second year with Mike Macdonald as head coach, the Seahawks finished 14-3, which is the first 14-win season in team history. Macdonald was hired by longtime Seahawks general manager John Schneider, who was retained in 2024 while Carroll was let go. Schneider also made tough decisions last offseason on a number of key players, trading quarterback Geno Smith to the Raiders and wide receiver DK Metcalf to the Pittsburgh Steelers, and letting wide receiver Tyler Lockett go.

“One of the hardest things to do in life is to say goodbye,” former NFL quarterback and football broadcast analyst Brock Huard said. “… But they did move on from Pete. They did move on from DK. They did move on from Geno, Tyler Lockett. Those are not easy things to do. (Those are hard) calls to make. There’s a lot of hurt feelings. … Those are not fun things to do.”

Salk credited not just John Schneider but Jody Allen, who has been the Seahawks chair since 2018, for making the right decision at tough times not just once but twice.

“I think John deserves a ton of credit for how they did it with Geno and for DK. Obviously, that was right there at the top of the list for me. But I do think there’s another person that deserves a lot of credit here and she doesn’t often get it, and that’s Jody Allen,” Salk said. “… I think she has made a couple of brilliant decisions. When the choice was there between Pete and (former Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson), she chose Pete, and it was 100% the right decision at that time. And a couple years later, when it became pretty clear she was going to have to make some sort of a choice with Pete… she did it right. She chose John and allowed Pete to move on.

“Both of those calls, two of the most important decisions she’s had to make in her tenure now as the owner of the Seahawks, she’s gotten both 100% right.”

That jumped out on the same day that one of Seattle’s NFC West rivals, the Arizona Cardinals, fired head coach Jonathan Gannon after a 3-14 season. Gannon’s three-year tenure ended with a 15-36 overall record, making him the third consecutive Cardinals coach to finish with a losing record for the team since Arizona replaced Bruce Arians in 2018.

“Because of that,” Huard said of the Seahawks’ decision making, “you have alignment and continuity that none of these other organizations have, and they’re striving for.”

Catch Brock and Salk live from 6-10 a.m. weekdays on Seattle Sports. Hear the full conversation about Pete Carroll and the Seattle Seahawks in the podcast from Monday’s show below.

Seattle Seahawks better off 2 years letting Pete Carroll go

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