Pete Carroll, just over three months after his final game as the Seattle Seahawks‘ head coach, found himself smack dab in the middle of a football practice.
The 72-year-old, Super Bowl XLVIII champion recently stopped by a University of Washington football practice. Carroll wasn’t merely an observer; he led the team through one of his trademark drills before giving the Huskies players a pep talk.
“It’s always been about competing,” Carroll told the players. “It’s always been about competing. It don’t matter who you’re playing, it doesn’t matter where you play, what color uniforms they wear, when the day that you play if you are the one that’s competing.”
Carroll’s presence at a Huskies practice shouldn’t be a surprise. Washington’s coach, Jeff Fisch, served as Carroll’s quarterbacks coach in Seattle in 2010. Carroll’s son, Brennan, is Washington’s offensive coordinator.
The youthful energy Carroll displayed during the Huskies practice also shouldn’t be a surprise. Carroll is known for his boundless energy, an energy that helped him enjoy considerable success with the Seahawks and at USC, where he won a pair of national titles.
Carroll (who is currently a Seahawks advisor) dismissed the notion that he needed a break from the grind of coaching during his final press conference as the Seahawks coach. He added that he is keeping his options open as far as the future is concerned.
“What’s coming, I don’t know,” Carroll said at the time, via ESPN. “I’ve got no idea and I really don’t care right now, but I’m excited about it because there’s a lot to learn, there’s a lot to study, there’s some great discoveries that are going to come our way.
“And as my all-time mentor Bud Grant said, not in so many words, ‘There’s rivers to wade, there’s waves to catch and there’s mountains to hike.’ It wasn’t exactly how he said it, but I get it. There’s some cool stuff that we’re going to do here and I look forward to all that.”
