Armando Salguero: Pete Carroll Has Jokes, But Biggest Laugh Is Seahawks' QB Situation

PALM BEACH -- Pete Carroll was so late to his scheduled meeting with reporters here Tuesday morning that almost all the other NFC coaches had finished their session before the Seattle coach arrived for his.

But all good, when Carroll finally got there, he offered some disarming humor to excuse himself.

"I did everything I could to miss this, sorry guys," he said.

And then ..

"Just moments ago, I was right where I wanted to be," he added.

Funny.

And the wisecracks were fitting because Carroll would then spend much of the next 35 minutes explaining away what a joke the Seahawks' quarterback situation has become.

The journey would start with how Carroll had gone from saying the team had "no intention" of trading Russell Wilson when he spoke at the NFL Combine in late February to explaining what a great move trading Wilson was a month later.

It then offered commentary on how awesome Colin Kaepernick, who hasn't played an NFL game in five years, looks on an iPhone video throwing against air.

Then, the good humor got around to Drew Lock and how talented and gifted he was coming out of the University of Missouri in 2019 and how that talent and those gifts remain now that he's arrived in Seattle as part of the Wilson trade.

Lock came to Seattle so talented and gifted that he remains a "developmental" -- Carroll's word -- player three years into his career.

And even with that super talented and gifted "developmental" player on the roster, the Seahawks remain in the market for a quarterback because they obviously realize they still need one who might eventually succeed Wilson -- and it would be a joke if they think they have the guy on the roster right now.

Yeah, rough times for the Seahawks because of their QB situation. So they smile to avoid crying.

Let's begin with Kaepernick, who held a workout last Wednesday in Seattle with the apparent hope he could convince the Seahawks — or any other team — to offer him an actual, legitimate workout.

"Our conversations have not progressed from the early connection that we made," Carroll said.

Next.

The picture Carroll paints for Lock is much rosier. Fact is he actually makes the player who has a career completion percentage in the 50s sound like a stud -- which, you should know, he's not.

"When he came out of college, we made our assessment and evaluated him into the draft and all that. We saw him as a big, strong-armed, mobile, aggressive, athletic quarterback," Carroll said. "And he had thrown a ton of footballs. He had been in an aggressive program where you got to see him do everything, use the entire field. We saw all of that."

Great!

But ...

"Unfortunately for him, there's plays have come about where there's been a lot of turnovers in his game. That just doesn't fit with us," Carroll added. "But we just have to fix that. We have to change his mentality and do the things to help him, you know, be his best. There's nothing that we see there that doesn't show us the potential's there.

"He's in a developmental mode as he enters our program, but he's already been through three years of in-and-out of activity. He's played a lot of football, and so we think we can capitalize on that. And what we're seeing now, we see all upside."

Translation: Lock has a lot of experience and has had plenty of time to figure it all out but hasn't. And now the Seahawks think they can fix him.

That's almost believable except in the next breath, Carroll says the Seahawks are still looking for another starting quarterback option.

“We are totally in the mentality that the fourth guy may be important to us for the long haul,” Carroll said. “So we are definitely still in the quarterback business.

“There are some veterans out there to be had. There are still some guys out there. Yeah, we are still looking.”

This act would be unnecessary if the Seahawks had held firm on their promise not to trade Wilson. But they caved.

And so on Tuesday, Carroll was trying to paint that as some sort of big victory.

“Well, yeah, things changed,” he said of the team's decision to trade Wilson. "There was a long period in there working it. I didn't have the intention of wanting to trade him. But we were looking at the opportunity, and once we got a good look at it, there was reasons. And so we got a really good deal and so we went ahead and made it.

“We got an opportunity we thought was too good to pass up. And we made a decision for the franchise that we thought was really good for us."

Funny.

Follow on Twitter: @ArmandoSalguero