Here’s Carroll at his most positive: A reporter asked him about integrity. With the Patriots’ football deflation scandal, the game’s integrity has been under fire the past two weeks. Carroll disregarded the scandal and used the question to discuss the difference between a mistake and a character flaw.
It was an interesting window into the way he thinks about players. As a coach who values grit and sometimes pushes to acquire hard-edged guys, his teams have been criticized as being undisciplined, and his methods have been called too loose. But listen to Carroll’s perspective.
“We wish to maintain the highest level of integrity,” Carroll said. “That doesn’t mean that we always make the right choices, and we do the right things in all of our lives. We make mistakes. We screw up. We misinterpret a situation, and we don’t handle it properly. The integrity is demonstrated by how you come out of that, I think, not by the fact that you falter and you err. I think it’s how you respond to it, and then do you respond and stick to the right manner and stay on the right path? I think that’s what we’re faced with.
“Do you face up to the truth? Do you get to it and do you work to do the right thing? Even then, we make mistakes. We continue to falter. But that’s not because we’re not trying to act with the highest of standards. ... We have a chance to help people learn also how to right their own issues in the way we demonstrate. I think we’re fortunate to have this responsibility, and we’re called on to do the right thing as best we possibly can.”
It always comes back to relationships with Carroll. Only he could manage such a crazy, boisterous roster and garner so much respect from his players. I’ve never met a head coach who is as committed to individual player development as he is to team success. One equals the other to Carroll. Both are important. That’s why he’s able to get the best out of his teams without being the old-school disciplinarian coach.
But don’t make the mistake of thinking there’s no discipline in this program.
“Just because you celebrate someone’s uniqueness, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have any rules,” linebackers coach Ken Norton Jr. said. “You are unique, but you still have the rules on your job. Guys don’t have complete, ‘Do what you want to do.’ We have rules. They understand that there are certain times to work, there are times to play, there are certain rules to be involved in. So, don’t overplay the uniqueness of it. Pete does a great job of player evaluation and at the same time, making it seem like you can do what you want, but you really can’t.”
The NFL loves uniformity, but the Seahawks are a hodgepodge upon first glance. Look again, and then they seem more connected than any team in the league.
It’s the multiplicity that makes their culture special — and impossible to replicate.
). "Experts say" "After criticism" "Critics point out" and so forth. Exactly who these folks are isn't in the first graf of Hersh's article, that's for sure...
