Pete Carroll’s Potential Return: Former Seahawks HC Pete Carroll Eyed for Bears’ Top Job

After a year away from the NFL, former Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll is ready to get back on an NFL sideline, and he has his eye on a specific sideline. There are currently three jobs that will be interviewing candidates for next season: the Bears, Jets, and Saints. According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, it’s the job in Chicago that Carroll has his eyes on.

Carroll has taken breaks from NFL coaching jobs in the past to much success. After his first stint as a head for the Jets, as a result of promotion from defensive coordinator, ended unceremoniously after one year, Carroll rebounded as a defensive coordinator for the 49ers before earning his second head coaching job with the Patriots, whom he took twice to the playoffs and with whom he never had a losing record. Despite the surface-level success in New England, team owner Robert Kraft fired Carroll after a late-season slide cost them a playoff spot in 1999.

Carroll then chose to become a head coach at the collegiate level, as opposed to returning to the NFL as a defensive coordinator again. After a rough 6-6 inaugural year as a college head coach with USC, Carroll quickly turned the Trojans into a powerhouse program, winning the conference seven straight years and winning back-to-back national championships in 2003 and 2004, not to mention just missing out on a three-peat after falling to Vince Young and the Longhorns in 2005.

Carroll turned his college success into another opportunity to coach in the NFL, landing the job in Seattle that he held for 14 years. In all that time, Carroll only had three losing seasons (twice going 7-9 and once going 7-10), amassing a career-record in Seattle of 137-89-1. He made the playoffs 10 times and twice made it to the sport’s season finale, winning the franchise’s only Super Bowl title. When the Seahawks narrowly missed the postseason last year due to a tiebreaker, Carroll and Seattle mutually agreed that he would step down from his post as head coach.

Nearly a year later, Carroll is ready to put his hat back in the ring. The question is: where could he go? This year’s crop of head coaching candidates has been deemed as a weaker class, especially after one of the stronger candidates, former Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, made the decision to take a head coaching at the collegiate level with the North Carolina Tar Heels. Schefter’s report claims that Carroll is interested in the Chicago job, but is he a good fit?

The Bears have made it known in preliminary conversations about who will replace Matt Eberflus that they are hoping to bring someone in who can develop and mold rookie No. 1 pick Caleb Williams. While Williams shares a USC connection with Carroll, the two were never there at the same time. Additionally, Carroll’s defensive-minded background would require him to come in with a plan on which assistants he could bring in to develop Williams. The Bears’ supposed preference leads many to believe that an offensive-minded coordinator like Kliff Kingsbury or Ben Johnson would be a better fit, especially since Kingsbury was a mentor of Williams at USC just last year.

So, if not Chicago, what city seems to make more sense as Carroll’s next destination? The Jets have a history of hiring defensive-minded head coaches, as well as a history of hiring guys named “Pete Carroll.” They just fired a former defensive coordinator in Robert Saleh, but their foray with Adam Gase, a former offensive coordinator, was brief and unsuccessful. Before that, was a defensive coordinator in Todd Bowles and, before him, Rex Ryan, who led the team to their last playoff appearance and back-to-back AFC Championship Game appearances. There may be a bit of bad blood over his firing the first time around, but over the last 30 years, he may have let bygones be bygones.

The Saints are the other option, though a few more pop up at the end of the season. Regardless, Carroll is ready to take a stab at another NFL job, and though he seems to favor Chicago early on, he may have to keep his options open and explore the other positions available.