The members of the greatest team in the Seahawks' 48-year history were already facing a test of their mortality.
Has it really already been 10 years since that exhilarating march to the Meadowlands and that glorious February night that quickly turned into the celebration of a 43-8 win over Denver?
Then came the gut punch of Wednesday — the news that Pete Carroll had essentially been fired as the coach of the Seahawks.
In Toronto, Luke Willson — whose famous two-point conversion in the NFC title game against Green Bay helped lift the Seahawks to their second Super Bowl under Carroll — was just finishing a hit talking about the NFL playoffs for The Sports Network when a producer told him he might not be done working yet, that there was some breaking news they might need him to comment on.
"I'm like, 'What happened?' and he says, 'Pete Carroll was just relieved of his duties.' And I was like, 'What?'" said Willson, who was drafted by the Seahawks in 2013 and played 85 games in three different stints for Carroll.
"I was surprised. I don't think you'll find a bigger Pete Carroll guy than me. I loved playing for the man, I respect the hell out of him and I think that 99.9% of people who have worked with him feel very similar to the way I do."
Linebacker K.J. Wright was in his office in his Bellevue-area home when he first got the news.
And then, he says, "the group chat [of Wright and other former Seahawks] just started blowing up."
"My reaction was, I was heartbroken for him," said Wright, a fourth-round pick in 2011 who played in Seattle through the 2020 season. "He was my coach for a decade. I know how much he puts into this game. I know how much he loves it. I know how much the city loves him. I know how much my old teammates love him and appreciate him.
"And we all know that everyone has an expiration date in this league. But it was just hard to see."
Wright and Willson were among those tuned in to watch Carroll's final news conference.
"I just shook my head like, 'Damn, it really happened,'" Wright said. "They are just moving on. It was hard to see him having to say his goodbyes. Hard for it to just end. It was rough."
In that moment it also hit them that, in a way, their relationship with the team might no longer be quite the same.
As long as Carroll remained the Seahawks' coach a piece of them was still there with him, as well.
They could watch the games and have a sense of what was happening on the sidelines. Show up to training-camp practices and feel a sense of connection with Carroll that let them still feel connected to the glory years.
Of their 2013 teammates, only Bobby Wagner was with the Seahawks this season. As a free agent, he may not be back in 2024.
Now, neither will Carroll.
"He was the last man standing," Wright said. "So to close that chapter, see that it's time to move forward with their new guy, a new face in the locker room, a new voice, a new message, new coaches in the building. Everything gets turned around. It's definitely hard to see Pete have to take a step down."
When he heard the news, longtime punter Jon Ryan felt similarly.
"I was surprised," Ryan said. "But really more than anything I was just sad. It's the end of an era. It was 14 years that was absolutely the best 14 years for the Seattle Seahawks and the city of Seattle. And to just kind of put that 14-year era to bed, just thinking of all the memories and to put that to bed, I was sad."
It led all to do some reminiscing.
Ryan, who played with the Seahawks from 2007-17, immediately thought of the 2015 win at Baltimore when Carroll famously delivered his postgame speech standing on top of some lockers.
There was a practical reason Carroll did so: A cramped visitor's locker room left few other options where Carroll could address the entire team. The players found it hard to fathom any other 64-year-old coach would have been capable of such an act.
"That was his 'Almost Famous' moment," Ryan said, referring to a memorable scene in the movie "Almost Famous" when a character climbs to the top of a house and yells, "I am a golden god."
"It was one of those moments where you didn't even need to know what he said," Ryan said. "The picture said 1,000 words."
Willson found himself Wednesday night re-watching highlights of some of the team's greatest moments, specifically the two NFC title game wins when the Seahawks rallied from deficits of 10 points or more to advance to the Super Bowl.
"I was like, 'Man, these are some crazy plays,'" Willson said. "Like when you are in the middle of it you don't really realize how unlikely some of this stuff was. We were down 10-0 against the Niners the year we won the Super Bowl, and against that defense?"
Wright flashed back to a conversation he had with Carroll in the summer of 2021.
Wright was a free agent and hadn't found the offers he'd anticipated, admitting he was still hoping against hope that the Seahawks might still be interested, when Carroll called one day. Wright didn't hear what he wanted to hear, but he said hearing it straight from Carroll made all the difference.
"He called me during my free agency and when no one else was calling me and he sat me down in the weight room [at the VMAC]," Wright said. "And he said, 'I know this sucks for you. I know it's a hard time and the market isn't going in your favor. Just know that we love you, we support you. And that it's still not happening here, but if a guy gets hurt, banged up in training camp, maybe we'll give you a call, but right now we are rolling with Jordyn [Brooks] as a successor.'
"And I truly thanked him for that, because I had like a glimpse of hope. But when we had that meeting I was able to close that chapter in Seattle and really move forward."
Wright eventually signed with the Raiders to play one more season before retiring. But what resonates as deeply as any specific moment is the feeling Carroll's coaching philosophy and personality created.
All three — Wright, Willson and Ryan — played for other NFL teams.
All said nothing compared to what they experienced with Carroll in Seattle.
"I don't think I've ever been in a situation where I was more ready, prepared and also just willing to just sacrifice for each other than with Pete," said Willson, who also played for Lions, the Raiders and Ravens. "He's the ultimate motivator. His ability to get everyone to buy in was unparalleled, at least in my career and in the places I've been to."
Ryan spent two years playing in the CFL and two more with Green Bay before landing in Seattle in 2007 and was part of the Seahawks team Carroll inherited when he arrived in 2010.
"I was in my seventh year of football, been in some environments where it was bit if a grind and it wasn't necessarily fun to go to work every day," Ryan said. "And he brought that fun back. He made it fun again."
All remembered wondering at first if Carroll could really be that enthusiastic, that cheerful, that positive seemingly every minute of every day before eventually deciding that, somehow, he really was.
"I've been a part of few organizations where there are guys that are one way in front of a camera and another in front of the team," Willson said. "That's not Pete. The guy you guys saw is the same guy we saw. And the man just never got tired. The same guy you see on the sidelines is the same guy at 5 a.m., the same guy at 6 p.m."
Wright recalled initially being caught off-guard by the tone of Monday meetings after losses.
"There were times we came in there on Monday morning and we'd just had an ugly, ugly loss and the first thing that he does is turn on the highlights and he'd say, 'Here's what you guys did well,'" Wright said. "And I'm like, 'What is this guy doing?' Just always a glass-half-full type of guy."
As the hours wore on after the news broke this week, Wright and the others began to find some consolation in the memories shared, the connections renewed, in the wake of Carroll's departure.
"It was a day of celebration, too," Wright said. "I found a lot of happiness in seeing all that he accomplished, all the people that he impacted in a positive way. He definitely made the most of his 14 years here. He did a heck of a job, a legendary career. And one day he might have a statue out there in front of Lumen Field."
