What the Seahawks Reassigning Pete Carroll Means for the 49ers

What a funny way to say he got fired.

Grant Cohn | Jan 10, 2024

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San Francisco 49ers

This is huge news.

Pete Carroll is out as the Seahawks head coach after 14 years with the team. The way the Seahawks phrased it, Carroll and them "amicably agreed" for his role to "evolve" from head coach to advisor within the organization, as if the move is a promotion for Carroll.

What a funny way to say he got fired.

This news has to come as a shock to the NFC West and the 49ers in particular, and frankly they can't be happy about it, because Carroll was the worst coach in the division. He used to be the best coach in the division, but that was 10 years ago. Since then, the NFL has passed him by.

Carroll isn't even a good defensive coach anymore -- Seattle's defense ranked 25th out of 32 teams in points allowed this season. Atrocious.

And Carroll certainly doesn't know what he's doing at quarterback. To his credit, he traded Russell Wilson at precisely the right time, but then he turned around and handed a three-year, $75 million contract to Geno Smith, who is decidedly mediocre.

Paying big bucks for mediocre quarterback play in 2024 is a big no-no, because Jake Browning and Brock Purdy exist. Meaning teams have proven they can find good quarterbacks late in the draft the past few years.

Presumably, the Seahawks will hire a head coach who's up to date with the league and understands how to find quarterbacks and not overpay for them. But Carroll still is an advisor in the organization, and if he helps hire the next head coach, the 49ers and the rest of the NFC West should be in great shape.

Published Jan 10, 2024

GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.