Have things changed for Seahawks’ Schneider without Carroll?

Apr 5, 2024, 11:54 AM

Seattle Sports

This year’s NFL Draft is a very different one for the Seattle Seahawks as its the first one since 2009 where Pete Carroll isn’t the franchise’s head coach.

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After 14 years in Seattle, Carroll is no longer running the show. He was let go earlier this offseason and Mke Macdonald, the former Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator, is now the new Seahawks head coach.

But John Schneider, who was general manager for Carroll’s entire Seattle tenure, is still with the Seahawks. With Carroll gone, Schneider is now president of football operations as well, meaning he has final say over all football-related decisions. That’s a change as Carroll had final say during his 14 years with the Seahawks.

So how have things changed for Schneider this offseason in his role? He discussed that during the weekly John Schneider Show on Seattle Sports.

“It’s crazy not being with Pete right now. It really is,” Schneider told Wyman and Bob.

Carroll, Schneider said, loved the draft, and he loved to point out prospects that he liked to Schneider.

“He’d be like down in my office like, ‘Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, have you seen this kid? Have you seen this? You’ve got to check out this gamer,'” Schneider recalled. “You know what I mean? I’d be like, ‘Yeah, I was doing that during the fall.'”

“It’s just been different. You do something with the same person for such a long time, I mean, everybody’s totally different,” Schneider added. “… Pete was a good evaluator, and he was really into (the draft). He acted like one of the scouts. He was just pounding the table for guys and would be like, ‘That’s my guy. That’s my guy.'”

Ultimately, though, things aren’t different with Carroll out of the picture, Schneider said.

“It’s exactly the same.”

While Carroll had the final say in personnel decisions, it didn’t come up very often, Schneider said.

“Pete, he was amazing in terms of he could have been that guy that like put his foot down and was like, ‘Hey, contractually at the end of the day, I have final say here’ or whatever. He rarely, rarely, rarely did. In 15 years, he never said, ‘Hey, we’re not doing this’ or ‘We’re gonna do this,'” Schneider said. “It was more along the lines of I could tell he didn’t feel good about a trade or an acquisition in a way where I could feel that (and be like), ‘Why would we force that and why head down that road?’ But yeah, it hasn’t changed in that regard.”

Additionally, there isn’t too much that’s changed for the Seahawks in terms of the types of players they’re targeting in the draft.

“Pete and I would always joke like, ‘Oh the Seahawks, they like those big, tall corners that run 4.3.’ It’s like the Mariners guys (saying), ‘You like the guys who hit home runs, right?'” Schneider joked. ” … But yeah, we’ve listened to (the new coaching staff) and obviously we want to know what they’re looking for by position and everything, but really it hasn’t changed all that much.”

Listen to the full interview from this week’s show at this link or in the audio player near the top of this story. Catch The John Schneider Show live every Thursday at 4 p.m. on Seattle Sports.