Pete Carroll started off his first press conference as Seattle Seahawks head coach with more of attitude and energy that made him so successful at the University of Southern California.
“I am so fired up to be here today,” Carroll said after Seahawks CEO Todd Leiweke introduced him.
The team is apparently just as fired up with Carroll, bucking the trend of hiring a GM first to hire the head coach. Instead, Carroll will work in a collaborative effort with the GM, once the Seahawks hire one.
Aside from voicing his enthusiasm to join the team, Carroll detailed what has changed about his coaching style since his last NFL head coaching stint in New England. (He went 27-21 from 1997-1999.)
He said he had an “epiphany” of what was most important to him as a football coach before he took the USC job. From then on, things clicked.
“The whole challenge here is to get the whole organization on the same page,” Carroll said. “Everybody understands where we’re coming from, what we’re all about, where we’re going, what we’re doing. I didn’t know that then. I didn’t know it. And I’m almost embarrassed to tell you that I (was) coaching an NFL club and I didn’t have my act together.”
Before New England, Carroll spent the 1994 season as head coach of the New York Jets, where he went 6-10. Starting in the 2001 season, he coached at USC. The Trojans went 97-19 and won two national titles during his nine seasons there.
Carroll seems ready to tackle the challenge in Seattle.
“I know we have to got through the press conference, but I can’t wait to get upstairs and start looking at film and getting this thing rolling,” he said.
And he certainly has his work cut out for him, taking over a 5-11 team as the third head coach in three years.
