Analysis: What Pete Carroll’s ouster as Seahawks coach means for John Schneider and Jody Allen

The stunning news Wednesday that the Seahawks are moving on from coach Pete Carroll made one thing abundantly clear: It’s John Schneider’s show now.

It also raised a question: Is Jody Allen in it for a longer haul as owner than many might have thought?

First, Schneider.

Carroll said several times during his walk-off news conference Wednesday that he was happy Schneider will have the responsibility for hiring a coach and essentially having total say over personnel.

Schneider served as general manager for all of Carroll’s 14 years with the coach officially having ultimate responsibility for personnel decisions. 

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As Carroll stated Wednesday, that didn’t mean he was making every single decision. 

What it did mean is Carroll essentially had veto power, something that was a priority when he was hired by the Seahawks in 2010. 

Carroll felt that his tenure with the Patriots from 1997-99 went awry when the organization made a decision to let running back Curtis Martin leave via free agency. Carroll made clear had it been his call he would have done what it took to keep Martin, who had just completed his third NFL season and went on to play eight more years with the Jets and land in the Hall of Fame. 

Carroll had full control at USC, where he went 97-19 from 2001-09, and decided during that stint he wouldn’t go to the NFL without having similar power.

With the Seahawks, it was often portrayed that Schneider had the reins on the 90-man training-camp roster, but Carroll made the final decisions on the cutdown to 53, and on any of the really big calls. It was Carroll who was thought to have nixed any idea of trading Russell Wilson in 2021 before he finally agreed to it in 2022.

“I had the say-so,’’ Carroll said. “But Johnny made millions of decisions here because he was great at making those decisions.’’

Now Schneider will make them all, including the biggest — finding Carroll’s successor.

It might be worth remembering that Schneider was a finalist for the Seahawks’ GM job following the 2009 season before Carroll was hired. Before a GM was picked, Carroll was hired and given final say over who to hire, settling on Schneider. 

Schneider, at that time, was director of football operations for the Green Bay Packers and said when he interviewed with the Seahawks that he envisioned hiring a head coach.

As he once told ESPN: “I had my books all set and everything. And all of a sudden Pete got hired. I was like, ‘Wait a second — what’s going on?’ I had my mind wrapped around getting ready to hire a head coach and what that was going to look like … so I had to rip all those pages out of my book.”

Now Schneider can put those back in and do the one thing he never has — hire a coach — one who will almost certainly come in with the understanding that Schneider will have final say.

It’s this scenario that apparently was in mind when the Seahawks re-signed Carroll and Schneider to new contracts in 2020 and 2021. 

Carroll signed first in 2020 to what was announced as a contract through 2025 but turned out to go only through 2024 as a guaranteed deal with 2025 being an option year. 

Schneider re-signed in January 2021 through the 2027 draft.

It was understood that timeline put Schneider in position to potentially hire Carroll’s successor someday. 

Now that day is here.

“If there’s nothing else that was part of this factor, that was the biggest factor,’’ Carroll said of finally agreeing to go along with the decision to remove him and announce it as an amicable departure and officially staying on as an adviser. “It was to help make sure that he could have this opportunity, and he’s going to go for it and I would do whatever I could to help him be successful still.’’

Schneider is expected to meet the media Tuesday in what will be his first public appearance as the main administrative face of the franchise.

Does Carroll decision mean Allen will keep team indefinitely?

As for Allen, exactly what her intentions are with the team remain cloaked in mystery because she has done no interviews since taking over as team chair following the death of her brother, Paul, in October 2018.

Paul Allen’s death led to speculation about the future ownership of the Seahawks. The team is technically owned by the Paul G. Allen trust with Jody Allen as the trustee.

In 2022, a timeline for a possible sale appeared to come into play. 

In the spring of that year it was revealed that a clause in Referendum 48 — which was passed in 1997 and helped fund the construction of Lumen Field — stated that if Allen or the estate becomes less than minority owners at any time before 25 years passed since the sale of the first bonds, the Public Stadium Authority would receive 10% of the gross selling price of the interest of the team.

The first date of sale of bonds was confirmed as May 1, 1999, meaning that technically a sale could happen after May 2, 2024 and the estate would not have to give that 10% to the state. 

Indications are that date would work more as a potential starting point for some of the legal issues involved in that process to be hashed out and that a more realistic date for a sale to actually unfold is 2025 — assuming Allen wanted to sell the team.

People close to the situation continue to insist that Allen has shown no inclination to sell any time soon.

It’s worth recalling Allen’s most recent public words on the topic, a statement released in July 2022 that came in the wake of a report that Nike co-founder Phil Knight and Alan Smolinsky, a minority owner of the Dodgers, had submitted a bid of more than $2 billion for the Blazers:

“As chair of both the Portland Trail Blazers and the Seattle Seahawks, my long-term focus is building championship teams that our communities are proud of. Like my brother Paul, I trust and expect our leaders and coaches to build winning teams that deliver results on and off the court and field.

“As we’ve stated before, neither of the teams is for sale and there are no sales discussions happening.

“A time will come when that changes given Paul’s plans to dedicate the vast majority of his wealth to philanthropy, but estates of this size and complexity can take 10 to 20 years to wind down. There is no pre-ordained timeline by which the teams must be sold.

“Until then, my focus — and that of our teams — is on winning.”

That Allen doesn’t appear in any hurry to do anything with the Seahawks seems further reinforced by a decision to move on from Carroll and commit to starting over with a new coach, which could require a commitment of a four-to-five year contract paying as much as $15-20 million a year. Carroll was thought to make at least $15 million a year.

It’s now Schneider’s job to get Allen to agree to whom she will sign those checks.