Pete Carroll Signs Contract Extension With The Seattle Seahawks
For Pete Carroll the equation was simple: win a Super Bowl, get a lucrative contract extension. According to Yahoo Sports, the 62-year old head coach has reportedly signed on to coach the Super Bowl winning Seahawks for at least another three years:
“The Seahawks locked up Carroll through the 2016 season with a three-year extension announced Friday. The new contract rips up the final year of the original five-year deal Carroll signed in January 2010, and cleared up any uncertainty whether the 62-year-old coach wanted to stick around after his original deal expired.”
And while Seattle certainly had – and still has – a number of contract priorities heading into the off season, including deals to keep Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas in a Seahawk’s uniforms long term, locking up Carroll was the first major step towards a Super Bowl repeat. With three playoff appearances in four seasons under Carroll’s guidance, the Seahawks may appear to some as locks to do so. But according to Carroll, as reported by Yahoo Sports, sustained success in the NFL is not easy:
“It’s really hard to get there, and it’s really hard to maintain it,” Carroll recently said at the NFL owners meetings. “I do think the challenge of sustaining is greater than getting there. It’s been demonstrated that teams can get there, but for the most part, can’t stay there. There’s a lot of natural things that happens to the teams, attrition, expectations, and all those things you have to deal with that make it very difficult. With great expectations, we take that challenge on, and we’ll see if we can demonstrate how to do that.”
The article goes on to detail the struggles teams have to get back to the Super Bowl the year after hoisting the Lombardi Trophy:
“Carroll is referring to the Super Bowl curse, a subject every NFL observer is aware of, and one most championship coaches hope to circumvent. Since New England won back-to-back championships in 2003 and 2004, no team has repeated as NFL champions. Only three teams since 1990 have won consecutive Super Bowl titles: Dallas Cowboys (1992 and 1993), Denver Broncos (1997 and 1998) and New England.”
Pete Carroll is 38-26 in four seasons with Seattle and 5-2 in the playoffs. After stints with the New York Jets and New England Patriots yielded less than stellar results, there was definite skepticism whether Carroll, a successful college coach with USC, could ever hope to achieve the same level of success in the NFL. With Carroll winning the Super Bowl last year however, and with the new contract in place, it appears all doubts have suitably been erased.
