On Wednesday, shocking news came out of the Pacific Northwest when Pete Carroll, the longtime head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, left his job.
He was one of the NFL’s longest-tenured head coaches, and the Seahawks had plenty of success under him, as they won the Super Bowl championship during the 2013 season while coming very close to another one the following year.
It’s easy to forget that years ago, Carroll was also a very successful coach at the University of Southern California, where he won a BCS national championship.
That makes him the only head coach to win titles in both the NFL and NCAA ever since the NCAA adopted the Bowl Championship Series format in the late 1990s.
The only head coach to win a Super Bowl and a National Championship in the BCS/CFP era
Pete Carroll pic.twitter.com/FVHlTcyUml
— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) January 10, 2024
Carroll, a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, started his coaching career in the 1970s as an assistant at the University of the Pacific in Northern California before moving on to the NFL in 1984 with the Buffalo Bills.
He got his first head coaching gig with the New York Jets in 1994, and he also spent three years as the New England Patriots’ head coach in the late 1990s.
After his tenure at USC was marred by controversy, he was hired by the Seahawks for the 2010 season, and he presided over one of the greatest defenses the NFL has ever seen, which was nicknamed the “Legion of Boom.”
Carroll also helped evolve the pro game, as he was one of the first head coaches to leave his offense on the field in fourth-down situations when his team was not in desperation mode near the end of a game.
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