It's hard to believe that the same Pete Caroll that built a dynasty (and who was also having fun pranking his guys) at USC from 2001-2009 before leaving for the Seahawks job turned 69 years old earlier this week. He just edges out Bill Belichick for the oldest head coach in the NFL.
Earlier this week, leading up to their game against Belichick's Patriots on Sunday, Carroll was asked if he or Belichick would be the first to step away from coaching. The leader of the Seahawks responded by saying he doesn't believe in the taking it year-by-year type approach that a lot of coaches tend to use.
“I’m feeling great," he shared via PFT. "I’m kind of on a five-year plan. Five years from now I’ll figure it out and reassess. I actually owe that to David Brooks. And he taught me that a while back. Something he wrote, ‘Why are you looking year-to-year? Why don’t you just plan it out over a five-year period?’ So each year is five more years. So it was five years last, and it’s five years this year, and we’ll figure it out when the time comes.”
After back-to-back 7-9 seasons after taking over in Seattle in 2010, Pete Carroll has built the Seahawks into an annual contender in the NFC. From 2012 through last year, the Seahawks have not finished worse than 2nd in the NFC West, and of course in 2013 he brought a Super Bowl title back to Seattle and lost a heartbreaker the next year to the Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX.
He is 101-59 leading the franchise, and has established the Seahawks as a perennial double-digit win team in seven of the last eight seasons, and is also known to do some off the wall stuff like take off his shirt while interviewing a draft prospect.
With that in mind, if anyone can coach into their 80's in the NFL, you would have to think the always-energetic Carroll would be the one to do it. But at least for now, he's taking it in five-year chunks at a time.