Pete Carroll, already the longest-tenured and winningest coach in Seahawks history, isn't going anywhere anytime soon, having recently signed a new contract that will keep him with the team through the 2025 season, when he will be 74 years old.
ESPN's Adam Schefter reported the news initially Sunday morning.
A source confirmed the report to the Seattle Times.
The deal was reportedly completed earlier this year but the team kept it quiet in part due to the pandemic.
Carroll's current deal runs through the 2021 season and is believed to pay him about $11 million a year. Schefter reported Carroll will continue to be among the highest-paid coaches in the NFL (unlike player salaries, coaches' salaries are not typically publicly revealed).
Schefter reported the deal was quietly agreed to earlier this year. And indeed, an NFL Network report in September stated the two sides were working on an extension and that Carroll wanted to coach at least five more years.
The new contract would assure Carroll having five more years with Seattle and as Schefter noted, also essentially assure that this will be his last coaching job.
Before this new extension, Carroll's most recent contract was signed on Christmas Eve, 2018, when he got a two-year extension that carried him through the 2021 season.
When Carroll signed that contract he had just one year remaining on his deal and there was some speculation about his future in the wake of the Seahawks' 9-7 season in 2017, the only time the Seahawks haven't made the playoffs since Russell Wilson became the quarterback in 2012.
On the day he signed his current contract in 2018, Carroll said of his future: "Every year I think the same in that regard. Take it really one year at a time with the projection of I'm kind of on a five-year plan. But that doesn't have any statement about my contract, it's just kind of the way somebody taught me to look forward, and it helps."
Earlier this year, Carroll repeated the "five-year plan" comment when talking to reporters who cover the Patriots and asked whether he or Bill Belichick would retire first.
"I don't know, ask him," Carroll said then. "I'm feeling great, and I'm kind of on a five-year plan. Five years from now I'll figure it out and I'll reassess, I actually owe that to (author) David Brooks. He taught me that awhile back in something he wrote — why are you looking year to year, why don't you just plan it out over a five-year period? It was five years last year, five years this year, we'll figure it out when the time comes."
Asked if that means it's five years every year, Carroll said: "There you go. Kind of a rollover approach."
Carroll's extension in 2018 also meant that he and general manager John Schneider would continue to work together for a few more years — Schneider's deal runs through the 2022 season.
The contract also assures that he stays through the entirety of Wilson's current contract with Seattle, which runs through the 2023 season.
Carroll is in his 11th season with the Seahawks, arriving in Jan. 2010 to replace the fired Jim Mora, and is 106-60-1.
With the Seahawks in their 45th season, the franchise has had 12 seasons of 10 or more wins — Carroll has seven of them, and with Seattle at 6-1 heading into Sunday's game at Buffalo appears headed for an eighth (Mike Holmgren had three in 10 seasons and Chuck Knox two in nine seasons).
