Catching Up With Carroll

Today I had the chance to talk to Pete Carroll, head coach of the Seahawks, for the first time since his hiring. In the wake of the senior bowl and national signing day, we had plenty discuss.

On The Process of Evaluating New Talent: “It begins at the senior bowl. We start to filter through the information John (Schneider) handed out to us. It’s a long process, that’s well underway…and John’s putting that stuff together. Then we go to the combine…and then we just take it to the next step…as we zero in and try to put together a board that makes sense to us.”

On Focus in the Draft: “We’re going to try and value these guys as we get to our positions, with always the mindfullness of needs. Sometimes you can get knocked out of a need emphasis because a guy just shows up that’s so special that you didn’t think would be available. Really good football players are always going to help your team no matter what position they play.”

On Working in the NFL On ‘Letter of Intent’ Day: “We have tracked USC a bit and watched Sark’s class at UW. It’s pretty exciting – this had been the night I’d slept in the office and waited for the fax machine to ring.”

On Sean Parker Choosing UW over Michigan and USC: “He’s a terrific football player, that’s a great get for UW. He’s an all around player…real bright kid, really good student. I would imagine they’ll play him at safety.”

On His Relationship with Rick Neuheisel: “I don’t know Rick very well. We’ve coaches against each other a couple times. He’s trying to put together that program down there, and he’s been pretty high profile. He seems to be doing pretty well. Other than just a coaching relationship, I don’t really know.”

On UCLA vs. USC 2009 – end of the game: “It was just a competitive moment, and Jeremy had a heck of a call, and sure enough we executed it perfectly and hit a touchdown pass – and then the place went kind of crazy. But it didn’t really have any intent on anything he had done – it was just playing football.”

On Coaches Exiting Colleges: “I think the easy way to look at it is a guy’s looking forward to figuring out his future and what he thinks is best for he and his family. There was no time that I was going to leave USC and it was going to be a good time. I think the shock of it is when you put forth so much effort to take over a program and you get all the energy going and you ask for everybody’s allegiance early on and you’re ‘Sell! Sell! Sell!’ – and then all of a sudden you’re leaving, now that’s a big shock there, and there’s no question that’s as hard as it can possibly get. But there’s never a good time.”

On Walter Jones: “He’s taking it one day at a time. He’s feeling better and he’s gonna come back here for some checkups in a couple weeks. He’s hopeful that he can maybe get back and he’s working in that direction, and we’d love to see him come back. It’s going to be pretty iffy, it was a long injury he’s already had – and with a lot of careful attendance to it, it still didn’t come back in time for last year. Walter leaves a big void there, so we have to see what we can do about that.”

You can listen to the interview in its entirety right here.