Apparently, things weren’t all good in Seattle the last few years.
We read the foolish chatter surrounding the “Blackness” of Russell Wilson and saw the Legion of Boom age and succumb to injuries as the seasons progressed. But it always seems like the Seahawks still maintained a brotherhood one in which the team appeared unified in attitude, winning, support of each other and firm in the belief of team first. But when two of the biggest faces on the team were given their walking papers, we all learned that the team wasn’t as close as we all thought it was.
In early March, the Seahawks traded defensive end Michael Bennett and a seventh-round pick to the Super Bowl Champs, the Philadelphia Eagles, for receiver Marcus Johnson and a fifth-round pick in this year’s draft. Two days later, they cut shutdown corner Richard Sherman, who immediately headed to the Bay Area to sign with the San Francisco 49ers. Following those surprising moves came the revelations of how players felt about their former head coach.
“I think it was kind of philosophical on his part,” said Sherman about Coach Carroll on Uninterrupted’s The Thomahawk Show. “A lot of us have been there six, seven, eight years, and his philosophy is more built for college. Four years, guys rotate in, rotate out, and so we had kind of heard all his stories, we had kind of heard every story, every funny anecdote that he had. And honestly, because he just recycles them. And they’re cool stories, they’re great for team chemistry and building, etcetera, etcetera. But we had literally heard them all. We could recite them before he even started to say them.”
Bennett joined in on when asked about his thought on Coach Carroll, stating to Greg Bishop of Sports Illustrated “he’d read books during team meetings last year because he’d already heard whatever Pete Carroll was saying.”
So while it wasn’t pure venom or hatred, it appears that Pete Carroll had become stale in a locker room full of veterans anxious to remove the stain of the devastating loss in Super Bowl XLIX in 2015. Could that Super Bowl clinching interception, a play call which could go down as the single worst call in all of sports history, have been the first crack in the Seahawks dam? Or was it just the natural course of time and the need for a change of scenery that stirred these feelings up? Either way, two key players from the Seahawks have moved on and more changes could be coming before the start of the season.
On Monday, Coach Carroll decided it was time to clap back at Sherman and Bennett while addressing the media during a pre-draft press conference.
“The thing I would tell you about that is that weve been through a lot around here, weve grown tremendously together and all of that, and changes are inevitable,” said Carroll. “Sometimes, guys cant hang with whats expected, for one reason or anothertheir growth, their development and all of that.
“And the best thing I can tell you is, that theyre not here.
After a season in which the team failed to make the playoffs for the first time since 2011, it appears that all parties involved are suffering from a case of “Grumpy Old Men.”
