You can replace their hips, but not their touch

Pete Carroll and other coaches strike a blow for Gray Pride.

Few coaches reflect the joy of winning like Pete Carroll, but then few win as much.

Football’s oldest adolescent high-fived and exulted his way through Seattle’s 37-23 win over the Chargers in Los Angeles Sunday, the fourth time in seven games that he’s been able to hug his way to the locker room.

This time he boarded the plane from a position atop the NFC West, at 4-3, a half-game ahead of the idle Rams. With San Francisco sputtering and with the Rams trying to rebuild the erector set that once was their offensive line, the Seahawks can act like contenders for a while.

And because there’s nothing more joyful than being proven right in front of a world that confined you to the dustbin of wrongness, Carroll, 71, might be lighting up the sideline for years.

A year ago the Seahawks finished last in the division and went 7-10, and quarterback Russell Wilson was finding passive-aggressive ways to indicate he wanted out. Carroll still wanted to make it work. When he realized he couldn’t, he and general manager John Schneider peddled Wilson to Denver for quarterback Drew Lock, tight end Noah Fant, defensive end Shelby Harris, Denver’s first and second round picks in 2022 and 2023 and a 2022 fifth-round pick.

When Lock failed to beat out career clipboard-holder Geno Smith for the quarterback job, the NFL pundit class was even more convinced that Carroll had run his course, that the man who won a national championship at USC and a Super Bowl in Seattle was being left in the dust by hipster coaches half his age.

Now Denver is 2-5 with 100 points in seven games. It has scored 91 in the six games Wilson has played, and he has an 83.4 passer rating for a 2-5 team that was supposed to have everything but a quarterback. Wilson has become exactly what Carroll and Schneider had feared: Too gun-shy to run and too imprecise to win from the pocket.

Meanwhile, Smith’s QB rating of 107.7 is third in the league, with 11 touchdowns and three interceptions. Maybe he is isn’t the long-term solution in Seattle, but it’s more likely that Wilson, and the collateral damage from the trade, is a serious long-term problem in Denver, where the rookie coach, Nathaniel Hackett, was mocked by Broncos fans not even six quarters into his tenure.

Carroll and Schneider don’t track talent with the rest of the NFL sleuths, like ornithologists tiptoeing in a nature preserve. They go off the path because they trust the way they identify players. With Denver’s first-round pick they took Mississippi State tackle Russell Cross, a Day One starter. With Denver’s second-round pick they took Minnesota linebacker Boye Mafe, who has started three games.

The Seahawks had their own pick right after they took Mafe. They scooped Kenneth Walker II, the Heisman Trophy finalist from Michigan State via Wake Forest. That’s the same Walker who streaked 74 yards around the Chargers for a touchdown, and has gained 88, 97 and 168 as a starter in relief of Rashaad Penny.

But neither Mafe, Walker nor Cross would be Seattle’s Rookie of the Year if you took the vote today. Tariq Woolen, a fifth-rounder from Texas-San Antonio, intercepted passes in four consecutive games, and has harnessed his 4.26-in-the-40 speed that earned him the nickname “Riq the Freak.” Cincinnati’s Coby Bryant, another cornerback who earned playing time, came in the fourth round pick.

This is how the Seahawks went from the most anonymous roster in the NFL to a Super Bowl champ in Carroll’s and Schneider’s fourth year.

In Year 3 they were presented with the option of playing Matt Flynn, a Packer backup QB whom Seattle had signed at high-market rates. But the exhibition season convinced Carroll that he should bench Flynn and use a third-round rookie who hadn’t even been invited to the combine. That was Wilson, and two years later the Seahawks crushed Denver in the Super Bowl.

As that team was slowly taken apart by age and the salary cap, it still made the playoffs six out of seven years, missing only in 2017 and 2021. The Seahawks opened this season with a made-for-prime-time win over Wilson’s Broncos, gave up 82 points in a two-game span, but has now beaten Arizona and the Chargers in back-to-back weeks.

The Seahawks could fly south at any moment, of course. They are members in good standing of the NFL’s Mediocre Middle, in which 15 of the 32 teams have won either three or four games.

But the point is that Carroll has more of a future than any 71-year-old coach has a right to expect. Or, as former reliever Dan Quisenberry once said, “The future is like the present, only longer.”

A surprising amount of coaches who are eligible for the Early Bird special are continuing to win.

Bill Belichick, 70, has the Patriots at 3-3 going into the Monday Night game vs. Chicago and has dredged up a new quarterback in rookie Bailey Zappe. Andy Reid, 64, has shrugged off Tyreek Hill’s departure and assembled new toys in the sandbox for Patrick Mahomes. Reid is fifth on the alltime NFL coaches wins list. Belichick is tied for second.

Meanwhile, San Francisco’s Kyle Shanahan (42), Green Bay’s Matt LaFleur (42), the Chargers’ Brandon Staley (39), Cleveland’s Kevin Stefanski (40) and Arizona’s Kliff Kingsbury (43) are struggling at the moment, despite their array of distinguished quarterbacks.

Dusty Baker will manage Houston into the World Series for the second consecutive season. He’s 73. In the other dugout will be Philadelphia’s Rob Thomson, who is only 59 but got his first chance to manage a team when the Phillies fired Joe Girardi in June. Thomson won his way out of interim status, and his Phillies knocked off defending World Series champion Atlanta. Brian Snitker, 67, managed the Braves to a frenzied stretch run that beat out the Mets for the N.L. East title. Those Mets, 101-game winners, were run by Buck Showalter, 66.

At 70, Nick Saban attempts to maneuver Alabama into the College Football Playoff for the eighth time in nine years, and 64-year-old Darryl Sutter just signed a contract extension after he needed only a season and a half to turn around the Calgary Flames. Sutter won two Stanley Cups with the Los Angeles Kings, who haven’t won a playoff series since they fired him.

Players ultimately don’t care if the coach shares their playlist, or shows he knows TikTok. They want a coach who helps them improve. Sean McVay could do that at 30. Bruce Arians could do that at 67. Age is not a pre-existing condition. If it was, Pete Carroll wouldn’t seem younger than Russell Wilson.