Buccaneers' Unlikely Path to Championship Should Make Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll Proud and Inspired

Of all the “coach speak” and corny one-liners football players and coaches alike will constantly spew at the public, perhaps none rings more true than “It’s not how you start, but how you finish.” It’s a statement that perfectly defines the 2020 Buccaneers—a team that nearly didn’t qualify for the postseason only to wind up hoisting the Vince Lombardi trophy on their home field late last night.

When Tom Brady signed with Tampa Bay last March, it was easy to dismiss any notion that it would go as far as it did. Sure they had the pieces in place to compete, but Brady had just been hit with what seemed to be a heavy dose of reality at the time in his last postseason appearance for the Patriots; a devastating 20-13 loss to the Titans in the wild-card round. Across all major North American sports we’ve seen plenty of high-profile players switch teams towards the end of their career and have almost nothing to show for it in the end. And with Brady looking the way he did in his final days for New England, how was this going to be any different?

Despite a 6-2 start to the season, Tampa Bay looked like the second-best team in an average NFC South division. From there they’d get embarrassed by the Saints on Sunday Night Football by a score of 38-3, then drop back-to-back 27-24 losses to the Rams and Chiefs—all at home. As 6-2 quickly turned into 7-5 in a tough NFC, the Bucs stumbled into the fourth quarter of the season seemingly confirming the priors of many fans and pundits alike with doubt looming over the team’s playoff aspirations.

And then, it clicked for them.

While Pete Carroll’s mantra of “Can you win a game in the fourth quarter?” has become a bit of a meme in Seahawks fandom, the future Hall of Fame head coach’s point was made with an exclamation last night. Though the Bucs sat comfortably in the literal fourth quarter of their 31-9 victory over the Chiefs in Super Bowl LV, the fourth quarter of their season was anything but a smooth ride.

From that November loss to Kansas City forward, nearly every game was of the “must-win” variety for the Bucs. And win they did, going 4-0 to end the regular season and clinch the NFC’s fifth seed in the playoffs. An additional four wins later and Brady, some 13 months removed from being “washed” in the public eye, is being fitted for his seventh Super Bowl ring. In a matter of eight weeks, Tampa Bay went from fringe playoff team to the very best in the world and everything that predates that is ancient history in the ever-changing universe of the NFL.

Starting off hot is all good and fine. The Seahawks did this year, reaching their first 5-0 start in franchise history, and it certainly made getting to the postseason far easier than it was for the Bucs. But in a way they experienced a complete reversal of Tampa Bay’s season. Even when they continued to win, there was cause for concern. Eventually those concerns blossomed into one of the most disappointing conclusions to a season the Seahawks have ever had.

Although the situations differ in specifics, the Seahawks - specifically Carroll and quarterback Russell Wilson - find themselves in a similar spot to the one Brady was in last year. Coming off a wild-card dismantling of sorts, it’s hard not to drown in the pessimism surrounding the team. Log on to Twitter and you’ll be quick to find a division within the Seahawks community between those that have detracted from either Wilson, Carroll, or both.

No matter which side you find yourself on, there’s this foregone conclusion that has ultimately been reached that the Seahawks, like Brady this time last year, are absolutely done and there is no hope whatsoever of competing for a championship again as they currently stand. But this is a fallacy derived of raw emotion; like many disregarded Brady and the Bucs’ chances despite the talent they already had, the same can be applied to a Seahawks team that presently has its greatest quarterback in franchise history and plenty of elite playmakers on both sides of the ball.

They faced a similar situation going into the 2018 season after missing the playoffs for the first time in the Wilson era. The general consensus was that this would be Seattle’s new normal now that they had parted ways with many of the players who contributed to their incredible run in the mid 2010s. However, the Seahawks adapted and went on to make the postseason with the most successful rushing attack in the entire league that year. While that particular season ended in a very similar fashion to their 2020 campaign, it proved this is an organization capable of defying expectations just as the Buccaneers did.

In what is likely the proverbial "fourth quarter" of Carroll’s coaching career, the Seahawks have an opportunity over the next few seasons to defy expectations once again. Since the heartbreak of Super Bowl XLIX, the team has constantly been under a microscope and the burning desire within the fan base to see Seattle “right those wrongs” increasingly rages as the years go by. That is why, despite the Seahawks being one of the most consistently successful teams in the NFL over the last decade, you’ll find nothing but despair and hopelessness littered across communities such as Seahawks Twitter where anything short of a championship is considered a failure.

Though the sentiment of “winning the game in the fourth quarter” is often mistaken for complicity, at its core it simply means that whatever precedes the result doesn’t matter as long as you find success in the end. For an organization notorious for playing incomplete games over the past few years, those words often feel empty to some. But it’s a perfect example of the NFL’s nature.

Now that Brady has won his seventh championship in his first year with the Bucs, his failed final season in New England is irrelevant. If Carroll, Wilson, and company bring a second Lombardi back to the Pacific Northwest, their postseason letdowns of the past few years will too become irrelevant and the pain of Malcolm Butler’s goal-line interception will diminish.

It’s the closure everyone involved deserves, from the players to the coaches and executives, as well as the fan base. But perhaps no one needs that sense of vindication more than Carroll, whose philosophy is rooted in the very foundation the game of football is built upon and all the debate it brings.