THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: A view of ‘Pete’ from the other side

If you’re a Seahawks fan, you’ve no doubt read all the glowing tributes to coach Pete Carroll over the last few days. 

“Pete,” as he was called, was a man beloved by fans and media alike in Seattle. While most media refer to the coaches they cover by their last names, to the Seattle media, he was “Pete,” and they were moved to give him a rousing round of applause after his good-bye news conference earlier this week.

Even on a day when he was essentially fired, current and former players — even those who didn’t really get along when they were Seahawks — found their way to Seattle to celebrate their former coach’s Seahawks run.

He said all the right things at news conferences, he coached pro football players with a joy normally reserved for college (or even high school) teams. Players appreciated that he cared about them as people, not just as interchangeable football parts. 

And there are stories upon stories out there about Carroll giving his time to random people, when there was no real good reason for him to do so.

No wonder he was so beloved.

HOWEVER, AS a 49ers fan, it was hard to watch as Pete Carroll owned us for years.

In his first 25 games against us as coach of the Seahawks, “Coach Pete” beat us 18 times.

Before that, the Seahawks were more of an irritant — a team we had to play on occasion, sometimes in their loud cement building. But they weren’t in our division, or even conference, so they weren’t a team we had to go through en route to our five Super Bowl titles in a 14-year stretch.

Then the Seahawks joined us in the NFC West.

Carroll came along eight years later, in 2010. Two years later, Seattle drafted The Great Russell Wilson, and the Seahawks went 17-4 against us with him as quarterback.

The Seahawks became our biggest rival in the division, and trips to Seattle usually didn’t go well for the 49ers. Everybody remembers the NFC title game, where Kaepernick underthrew Michael Crabtree, and Richard Sherman was able to tip the pass to a teammate for a game-saving interception. That kept us from a return trip to the Super Bowl, where instead the Seahawks crushed the Denver Broncos two weeks later.

Meanwhile, this old-timer was prowling the sidelines, encouraging his players, lording over a team which gave up yards grudgingly, and when they did, one of their safeties was there to knock you into next week.

How is this goofball, approaching 70 but acting half that age, kicking our butts?

THE THING is, I rooted for Pete Carroll’s teams for a short time — and not because he was an assistant coach with the 49ers for two seasons (1995-96).

Perhaps the NFL wasn’t ready for a rah-rah guy in the 1990s when Carroll coached the Jets for a year and the Patriots for three, before getting replaced in New England by some guy named Belichick.

I grew up watching USC in the Rose Bowl, rooting for them to beat whoever the Big Ten sent out west. They weren’t my favorite team in the West, but they represented West Coast football, so when the Trojans were good, the West looked good.

So when “Pete” returned storied USC to the top of the college football world in the early 2000s, winning two national titles and playing for a third, all was good in West Coast football.

(Of course, USC got in a little trouble with the NCAA during that time, and soon … voila! … Carroll was coach of the Seattle Seahawks, soon to become the most successful coach in that franchise’s history.

FOR YEARS when Carroll had it going in Seattle, it got to the point where, from the other side, you just had to hope the Seahawks would come up with some hairbrained maneuver to help you out.

Like giving the ball to Michael Robinson, instead of Marshawn Lynch, on fourth and short at Atlanta in a divisional playoff.

Like deciding to throw a pass from the 1-yard line late in the Super Bowl against the Patriots, instead of giving the ball to Lynch, who was perhaps the most dominant runner of his generation.

Like, years later, wanting to give the ball to Lynch on the 1 in a game against the 49ers for the division title — a chance to right the aforementioned wrongs. Only problem was, Lynch, who had rejoined the Seahawks out of semi-retirement during the season, was on the sideline, without his helmet. In the ensuing chaos, Seattle had to take a delay-of-game penalty, and ended up getting stopped inches short of the goal line on fourth down.

Even at USC, on a team with Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart, he gave the ball to LenDale White with a chance to finish off Texas in the national championship game. We know how that turned out.

CREDIT CARROLL for delivering Seattle its first Super Bowl title. Seahawk fans will bemoan that there was no repeat, but in reality, Seattle shouldn’t have been in that game — Green Bay helped by getting scared and playing conservatively with a 16-0 third-quarter lead in the NFC title game, eventually losing in overtime. But Seattle fans didn’t mind.

Yes, “Pete” took the Seahawks back to the playoffs in five of the next seasons, but when you’re used to playing in Super Bowls … the cold reality is, since then, the Seahawks have not even made it as far as the NFC championship game since then.

Since “the ill-fated pass,” and especially in the last three seasons, they’ve gone from Super Bowl contender to needing help from other mediocre teams just to make the playoffs.

“Pete” was known as a defensive coach, but his defenses in recent years weren’t very good.

So it happened this week. It happens to the best of coaches. Even to Belichick.

WE COULDN’T beat the Seahawks when The Great Russell Wilson was quarterback — Seattle was 17-4 against us in the TGRW era. If we thought we had him sacked, he would escape and either run for big yardage, or find a wide-open receiver for a huge gain.

Even after he moved on to the Denver Broncos, TGRW beat us with an inferior team.

Since “Russell” was asked to leave Seattle, the 49ers are 5-0 against “Pete” and the Seahawks, and perhaps it’s not a coincidence. We went from defending a quarterback we couldn’t contain, to one who was just as likely to throw an interception or get strip-sacked in a key moment, as he was to hit one of his team’s uber-talented receivers for a big gain. 

TO CARROLL’s credit, as noted by Bay Area media, he did force the 49ers to get better.

They admired the coach/GM working relationship Seattle had, and have tried to replicate it with ShanaLynch. It seems to have worked pretty well.

Speaking this week, Carroll didn’t sound like a guy heading into retirement. His enthusiasm is infectious, his personal touch with players life-changing. If he were to lead another team, all he would need (besides a good defensive coordinator) is a right-hand man with the power to tap him on the shoulder at times and say, “Uh, Pete, do you really want to make that call?”

They won’t, but the other big football program in Seattle could do worse than at least consider bringing in the ageless “Pete.”

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports.