What Pete Carroll said about Frank Clark prior to tagging, trading: "He's a Seahawk. We'll figure it out somehow"

It's not a lie if you believe it: Seaside Joe 1425

There are many NFL rules and organizational details intended to create competitive balance that Pete Carroll seems to have little regard for or understanding of. This is not necessarily a criticism, only an observation; Pete seems much more like a “football coach guy” than an “executive guy” but he wears both hats anyway.

For instance, the NFL started awarding compensatory picks in 1994 as a way to offset huge free agent losses. The Seahawks made out with the max of four comp picks in 2015 and 2016, thanks to their major draft hauls in the early days of Pete, but 2023 will be another year with no comps for Seattle. The NFL added the fifth-year option to contracts for players drafted in the first round in 2011, but the Seahawks have rarely triggered the fifth-year option…and rarely have reason to. Jordyn Brooks will test that this year. Pete doesn’t even really seem to have that much interest in first round picks, making it all the more intriguing that the Seahawks are set to pick in the top-10 for the second year in a row. What will Pete do?

And then there’s the franchise tag, an option meant to give teams opportunities to keep their best players from leaving in free agency to go somewhere better for them. Since Pete arrived in Seattle in 2010, the Seahawks have only ever tagged two players and one of them was a kicker: Olindo Mare in 2010 and Frank Clark in 2019.

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