Most coaches impose standards from the outside. Pete Carroll, head coach of the Super Bowl Champion Seattle Seahawks, assisted by sports psychologist Michael Gervais, asks his players to go inside—to find the confidence to be the best they can be. He coaches the whole person, and it changes their view of the game, and of life. Hugh Delehanty reports.
The hip-hop music is blaring and Pete Carroll is loving it.
Boom dada dada da da boom.
Up on a hill overlooking the Seattle Seahawks’ practice field, an army of fans, wearing blue-and-neon-green jerseys, ski masks, and war paint are pounding drums, waving flags, and screaming love chants to their heroes. Meanwhile down on the field, quarterbacks are throwing bullets, linemen are crashing into each other, and running backs are charging up the field as if it were the Super Bowl. And Carroll, the team’s energetic 63-year-old head coach, is dancing from one corner to the next, clapping his hands, shouting props to players, and revving up the beat.
Boom dada dada da da boom.
Then just when it looks as if things couldn’t get any crazier, a task force of Marines arrives by helicopter, drops into the lake next to the field, and stages an amphibious attack on the training camp. It’s not a real attack, of course, just a show for the fans. But as the Marines swim ashore and take the beach, Carroll and the players crowd around to greet them. And in a moment of warrior solidarity, lineman Russell Okung offers to trade helmets with the sergeant in charge.
Carroll doesn’t force players to conform to a rigid, alienating system. He focuses on cultivating each player’s unique qualities, and asks them to contribute those to the team.
Most NFL coaches—especially the control-freak variety—would find this kind of hyper-charged atmosphere unbearable. But for Carroll, this is an awareness exercise. He believes in immersing his players in a world of distractions to train them to quiet their minds in the midst of chaos.
“I’m trying to create a really thriving environment,” he says. “That means making it as rich as possible. So there’s noise, competition, activity, energy—like when we play. It’s better than a pristine vacuum-type environment, as far as I’m concerned. Because we never play there. We don’t talk about mindfulness that much, but that’s how we operate. We focus on what’s right in front of us. We don’t care about the other team or the environment we’re playing in. We just take every game as if it’s the most important in the world and focus right on that. That takes great mindfulness.”
It seems to be working. When Carroll took over the Seahawks in 2010 after leading the University of Southern California (USC) Trojans to two national championships, the pundits were skeptical. Sure, they said, his positive, rah-rah approach might work with fresh-faced college boys, but not in the serious, hard-ass world of the NFL. But Carroll and general manager John Schneider slowly rebuilt the roster with players who were languishing elsewhere (e.g., star running back Marshawn Lynch), as well as out-of-the-box draft picks, such as quarterback Russell Wilson and cornerback Richard Sherman. And last season the Seahawks not only won the Super Bowl, they dominated the formidable Denver Broncos in a surehanded, seemingly effortless manner that had other NFL coaches scratching their heads and wondering what exactly Carroll was doing up there in the coffee capital of the world.
Pete Carroll has never been one to follow the crowd. While other coaches clung religiously to outdated, my-way-or-the-highway tactics, he was creating a groundbreaking approach to coaching, blending the ideas of psychologist Abraham Maslow, author Timothy Gallwey, and other thinkers with his own insights into the nature of competition and high-performance. “He’s like an independent artist,” says Yogi Roth, a TV football analyst and co-author of Carroll’s biography, Win Forever. “He’s going to sing his song the way he wants to sing it.”
“I’ve never seen a coach that players loved so much,” says veteran ESPN football writer Terry Blount. “These guys love Pete because he lets them be themselves. He gets criticized for being too freewheeling and easy, but the fact is the players are really engaged and committed.”
At the heart of his system is the revolutionary concept (in NFL circles) that the key to success is nurturing each player’s individual growth. Rather than force players to conform to a rigid, alienating system, Carroll and his coaches focus their attention on cultivating the special qualities of each player, then helping to incorporate them into the team.
“Our system is designed to allow players to be the best they possibly can be,” Carroll says. “That’s why we celebrate uniqueness, their individuality. They have to act with the team, but they can do that in a way that illuminates who they are. Most people think you can’t do that. They say there’s no space for people to be individuals within a team. I think just the opposite.”
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The moment of truth for Carroll came in 2000 when he was dismissed as head coach of the New England Patriots. This was the second time he had lost a top coaching job, and he realized that, to succeed as a head coach, he needed to develop a clear philosophy of coaching that he could call his own. He came to this revelation while reading a book by legendary basketball coach John Wooden. “It took him sixteen years to figure it out,” writes Carroll in his biography, “but once he did, he absolutely knew it. After that, he rarely lost, and he went on to win ten of the next national championships. It seemed he won forever.”
Inspired, Carroll began crafting a philosophy based, in large part, on his unique view of competition. Ever since he was a boy growing up in Marin County, California, desperately wanting to be like his older brother, Jim, a three-sport star in high school, Carroll had been an obsessive competitor. Although he was so small—five-foot-four and 110 lb.—he needed a doctor’s note to play football as a high school freshman, he persisted and eventually developed into a solid all-conference player for the University of the Pacific (UOP).
“Pete has always b