Seahawks coaching hire is important, but key is who GM John Schneider puts on roster

Who’s it gonna be? 

That’s the primary question on the minds of Seattle sports fans right now. 

Pete Carroll was probably the most successful coach in this town’s history, and his departure from the Seahawks has the Emerald City buzzing about who will replace him at the helm.

Dan Quinn? Mike Macdonald? Ben Johnson? Mike Vrabel perhaps? All possibilities, as are a number of other candidates. Still, as significant as this hire may seem for Seahawks general manager John Schneider, it’s not nearly as important as the roster he fields afterward. 

Obviously, coaches matter in the NFL. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t see massive win-loss upticks like we did with the 49ers last decade, when Jim Harbaugh took a 6-10 team and made it 13-3 the next season. But coaches aren’t panaceas. Widespread talent is. 

Just look at how so many headset legends performed when they weren’t surrounded by the game’s best. 

Bill Belichick sans Tom Brady? Yeah, he went 11-5 one season with Matt Cassel behind center, but had three losing seasons in his final four years with the Patriots — and that was after posting four losing seasons in his five years with the Browns. Carroll in the post LOB-era? One playoff win from 2017-2023, a 25-26 record in his last three years — and all that on top of middling stints with the Jets and Patriots. 

We saw Bill Parcells fade with the Cowboys. Sean Payton had three straight 7-9 seasons with the Saints. You need the players. And with Schneider finally having full autonomy as the Seahawks’ GM, that’s where he needs to make his mark. 

Carroll was inimitable in his spirit and relationship-building skills. The evergreen story during his tenure was how many former Seahawks wanted to come back to Seattle to play for the man who cared so much for them. He also had a shrewd defensive mind that vaulted him to the top of the coaching ranks in the first place. 

But his teams in Seattle won because of who he and Schneider placed between the lines. Drafting? How about Russell Wilson in the third round, Bobby Wagner in the second, Earl Thomas in the first, Richard Sherman and Kam Chancellor in the fifth and K.J. Wright in the fourth? Trades? How about hounding the Bills to get Marshawn Lynch in a Seahawks uniform to forever change the franchise? 

Maybe — and this truly is a maybe — the rest of the league caught up to a set-in-his-ways Carroll, who failed to properly adapt to the modern NFL. More likely, though — he just didn’t have the horses anymore. 

Can Schneider change that? It would be easy to dismiss the Seahawks’ recent mediocrity as a byproduct of having a middling quarterback in Geno Smith. This is a QB-driven league, and teams lacking an elite signal caller seldom make a deep playoff run. But that does not explain how poor the Seahawks have been defensively over the past several seasons. 

They were 30th in total defense last year, 26th in 2022, 28th in 2021 and 22nd in 2020. Might a young Devon Witherspoon — the cornerback oddsmakers predict will finish third in the NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year voting — boost them next season? Probably. Did losing outside linebacker Uchenna Nwosu early in the season hinder their pass rush? Sure. 

But the front office hasn’t provided the proper personnel on that side of the ball for the Seahawks — a situation Jamal Adams’ four-year, $70 million contract certainly didn’t help. 

Again, coaches matter. Perhaps more in the NFL than any other professional sport. The complexity of the game, the need for wholesale adjustments in the middle of a contest — if the man running the show is lost the team will be, too (See: Nathaniel Hackett in Denver). 

But it doesn’t matter which of any of the available coaching candidates Schneider selects if he doesn’t upgrade the roster. 

The 12s will be chirping and speculating regardless of who replaces Carroll. And the hire will be praised and criticized and everything in between by the pundits. 

I’m just not sure how much it will matter if the personnel doesn’t improve. Schneider wanted the opportunity to run this team with nobody but the owner to answer to. After 14 years, he has it. 

It shouldn’t be too long before he brings on a coach. However, what he does in the months afterward is what will define his legacy in this new role.