There were times over the past 14 seasons that the 49ers-Seattle Seahawks rivalry was the best in all of football.
There were other long periods in which the Seahawks thoroughly dominated.
Most recently, the 49ers have had five consecutive victories in their head-to-head meetings.
Regardless of what else was going on with the 49ers, those games always had greater significance and intrigue mostly because of the gum-chomping, white-sneaker-wearing coach on the Seahawks’ sideline.
Things are going to look and feel a lot different in the future without spry Pete Carroll, 72, on the Seattle sideline.
Seahawks chair Jody Allen announced on Wednesday that Carroll would no longer serve as the team’s head coach. Rather than describing the situation as a firing, Allen said Carroll will “evolve” into the purposefully vague role of advisor.
The future of the Seahawks will be shaped by what Carroll helped establish during his time with the Seahawks. With Carroll as head coach, Seattle advanced to the postseason 10 times and the franchise claimed its one and only Super Bowl title.
Carroll forced every team in the NFC West to raise its game in order to keep up.
And in many ways, the 49ers are in their suitable current situation because of the example Carroll set in working so capably with general manager John Schneider.
The 49ers were a franchise known largely for its dysfunction as it cycled through coaches following the abrupt dismissal of Steve Mariucci. Despite a 22-10 record in 2001 and ’02, Mariucci was fired. Over the next eight seasons, the 49ers never even sniffed the NFL postseason.
Jim Harbaugh was hired away from Stanford in 2011, and the 49ers immediately regained national prominence. However, Harbaugh and then-general manager Trent Baalke did not mix well. Ultimately, Harbaugh was pushed aside and more dark days and incompetence followed.
Carroll grew up in Marin County as a fan of the 49ers. He even served two seasons as defensive coordinator on George Seifert’s staff in the mid-1990s. But Carroll might have done more unwittingly for the long-term health of the 49ers after he became one of their greatest nemesis.
After the one-and-done coaching tenures of Jim Tomsula and Chip Kelly, 49ers CEO Jed York devised a plan to re-build the organization.
He determined the 49ers should attempt to follow the Seattle model. The priority was to find a head coach and a general manager who were as compatible as Carroll and Schneider.
And that is exactly what they found with coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch.
The 49ers have emphasized building a winning culture, led by the two individuals at the top of the football structure. Carroll and Schneider set the standard.
The 49ers went from the worst roster in the NFL — and rudderless leadership — to the Super Bowl in just the third season of the Shanahan-Lynch pairing.
When the 49ers announced multi-year contract extensions for both men in September, the news was met with widespread approval inside the locker room.
“Those two work very well together,” 49ers All-Pro tackle Trent Williams said of Shanahan and Lynch. “Who deserves an extension more than those two? You’d be hard-pressed to find somebody.”
The 49ers succeeded in replicating the Seahawks’ formula. They enter the playoffs as the No. 1 seed in the NFC after advancing to at least the NFC Championship game in three of the past four seasons.
Meanwhile, the Seahawks have decided to move on from the man most responsible for the best period in their franchise’s history.
As a result, the 49ers-Seahawks rivalry may never look quite the same.
The 49ers have suffered significant injuries at the safety position this season, but because of the depth that 11-year NFL veteran Logan Ryan now provides, the secondary hasn’t skipped a beat.
Coach Kyle Shanahan on Tuesday shared how thankful the 49ers are for Ryan’s immediate assimilation into their defense after his Dec. 5 signing with the team.
“Logan’s been great,” Shanahan told reporters on a conference call. “It’s what we hoped for. We knew how he was when he was playing. And you never know when you’re getting a guy in the middle of the year.”
The 49ers lost All-Pro safety Talanoa Hufanga to a season-ending knee injury in their Nov. 19 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Rookie Ji’Ayir Brown stepped into the starting role the next week, but he later suffered a knee sprain that sidelined him for the final two regular-season games.
“We thought with how thin we were getting at safety that we needed a guy with experience,” Shanahan said. “He came in and filled his role great as a backup, great on special teams, just how he carries himself in the building.
“And then when Ji’Ayir did get hurt and he did go in, he played like a starting-caliber safety, which he’s done his whole career at a high level — not just safety but nickel and corner.”
Ryan was a third-round pick of the New England Patriots in the 2013 NFL Draft and won two Super Bowl championships in four seasons with the team before making stops with the Tennessee Titans (2017 to 2019), New York Giants (2020 to 2021) and Tampa Bay (2022).
Ryan began his 49ers tenure as an addition to the special teams unit before being tapped as a defensive starter in Week 16. He logged 13 total tackles (nine solo, one for a loss) in his two starts and played every defensive snap in both games.
Shanahan remains unsure about the exact date of Brown’s return, which makes Ryan’s contributions even more valuable.
“For him to come here and do this with a little amount of time, I can’t say enough good things about him,” Shanahan said. “And we’ll see how Ji’Ayir is when he comes back, because Ji’Ayir was playing at a real high level, too, before he got hurt.
“But I’m real happy with Logan. Logan’s really helped us out in a tough situation.”
Leave a Reply