Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll was one of five head coaches across the league fined $100,000 for failure to comply with the NFL’s mask mandate for coaches on the sidelines.
Carroll has worn a mask on the sidelines for games but the times where he didn’t have it properly situated apparently crossed an acceptable threshold from the league. According to John Boyle of the team’s website, Carroll was disappointed that he fined by the league but also disappointed in himself for not handling with the mandate better on game day.
“I had a coach who was reminding me about it throughout the game, (running backs coach) Chad Morton was on my ass the whole night. He was reminding me the whole time,” Carroll said. “I even changed masks at halftime to find one that worked better. Sometimes you’ve got to get coached up. Sometimes you have to admit that that you screwed up and have got to do better.”
Carroll has taken pride in his team being able to go through all of training camp and the first two weeks of the regular season schedule without a single positive test for COVID-19. Wide receiver John Ursua had a false positive case early in camp but follow-up testing confirmed an errant result. Carroll was really happy with the team’s processes to be able to make a road trip to Atlanta for the opener against the Falcons, return to Seattle and get through another week of practice without any positives popping up from the experience.
He saw the first home game as another hurdle to clear with the separate challenges that experience would create.
“First, I’ll be really proud of that,” he said last week. “That everybody in the organization figured it out and the players complied and the coaches complied in fashion, and that will let us know that we know how to do this and so then it’ll just be getting down to the discipline and the care we take to it all the way through the process and see how long we can keep going.”
The Seahawks have another home game this weekend with the Dallas Cowboys and Carroll will have to have a renewed focus on his own part in that process on Sunday.
“We wear masks all day at practice, we wear them around the building,” Carroll said. “I know it’s extremely important to wear masks. Sometimes you’ve just got to be reminded. Sometimes you’ve got to get coached up.”