Just call the Seahawks “Team Snub.”
For some reason, postseason awards just haven’t found their way to the Seattle organization here in the upper-left corner of the country.
Since Pete Carroll and John Schneider arrived in 2010 and revitalized Seattle football — winning one Super Bowl and barely losing another, making the playoffs virtually every year while creating one of the greatest defenses of all-time — the hardware hasn’t followed at a commensurate rate.
Carroll has never been named NFL coach of the year. Schneider has never won executive of the year. Former Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson famously (infamously?) never received a single MVP vote. And none of their future Hall of Fame Legion of Boomers ever won a leaguewide defensive honor.
And it’s happening again this year. On Wednesday, the five finalists for Associated Press Coach of the Year — regarded as the most prestigious of the NFL coaching awards — were announced, with Carroll omitted. And on Thursday it was Eagles general manager Howie Roseman, not Schneider, who was named Executive of the Year by the Professional Football Writers of America. The Sporting News has yet to name its top executive, but again it’s the PFWA award that’s considered the industry standard.
The Seahawks’ patron saint should be Glenn Close, who has never won an Academy Award despite eight nominations for Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress. I thought Carroll might at least get a sort of “Lifetime Achievement” nod this year, sort of like when John Wayne won a Best Actor Oscar for “True Grit.”
Of the two, I view Schneider’s omission this year as the more egregious snub. Carroll would have been the unanimous winner of the “Coach of the Half-Year” award if it existed, but the Seahawks’ second-half slide took the edge off his candidacy. From 6-3 with a four-game winning streak and the division lead after nine games, the Seahawks went 3-5 the rest of the way. They lost at home to Las Vegas (6-11) and Carolina (7-10), which coupled with an earlier home defeat to Atlanta (7-10) nearly doomed their playoff hopes and ensured a difficult first-round matchup with San Francisco.
In the big picture, however, Carroll deserved to be among the finalists, which wound up being Doug Pederson (Jaguars), Nick Sirianni (Eagles), Brian Daboll (Giants), Sean McDermott (Bills) and Kyle Shanahan (49ers). Given the very low expectations for the Seahawks this season and the unsettled quarterback position, he did one of the best coaching jobs of his career in guiding the Seahawks to a winning record and a playoff berth.
In 2013, when the Seahawks were clearly the league’s most dominant team, the coach of the year was Ron Rivera, who guided the Carolina Panthers to a 12-4 record and the NFC South title after a 1-3 start. And in 2014, when it was Carroll who kept the Seahawks together after a 3-3 start to win nine of their last 10 games en route to another Super Bowl, the winner was Bruce Arians of Arizona, which faded after a 9-1 start and finished a game behind Seattle in the NFC West.
Coaching awards are nebulous endeavors, with voters perpetually wrangling with whether to give primacy to a great season or a notable turnaround. Carroll seems to have fallen on the wrong side of both equations over the years, but it would have been hard to make an ironclad case for him this year over the likes of Shanahan, who had to deal with two season-ending quarterback injuries yet surged into the playoffs behind an unheralded rookie QB, or Pederson, who won a division title with a Jacksonville team that went 3-14 the previous year. I would have squeezed Carroll into the McDermott spot, though. Everyone already knew the Bills were going to be good this year; certainly, his graceful handling of the Damar Hamlin situation is notable, but I think it’s hard to argue Carroll didn’t do more with less than McDermott.
But when it comes to ironclad cases, Schneider’s leaps out. Executive awards are equally nebulous. Yet it’s hard to believe that despite his role in building the Seahawks powerhouse — including incredible drafts (Bobby Wagner, Russell Wilson, Earl Thomas, Richard Sherman, Kam Chancellor, et al), trades (Marshawn Lynch) and signings (Doug Baldwin, Michael Bennett, Cliff Avril) along the way — Schneider never was cited as the top executive. Several general managers who won since 2010 have since been fired. The 2014 winner — one Jerry Jones — might well have been fired as GM by now if he didn’t, you know, own the team.
But it’s hard to have a much better year than Schneider did in 2022. The Wilson trade was a spectacular success on multiple levels — not burdening the franchise with a huge long-term contract for Wilson, something the Broncos will be digging out from for years, it appears; recognizing that Wilson was at the brink of a precipitous decline, but trading him before it became too apparent; and reaping a bounty in draft picks and players in the deal that will benefit the organization for years to come.
Couple that with the internal decision that Geno Smith was the right person to take over at quarterback, not Jimmy Garoppolo or Baker Mayfield or whomever the flavor of the day was during the offseason. Then sprinkle in a draft that yielded the best rookie class in the NFL as measured analytically, with three starters on each side of the ball, and the free-agent signings of Uchenna Nwosu and Austin Blythe.
That’s an Executive of the Year resume — not to minimize what Roseman did in building an Eagles team that finished as the No. 1 seed in the NFC. Yet as the aforementioned actress might have said over the years after the Oscar ceremony, Close but no cigar. Again.