You're Darrell Bevell and you're an offensive coordinator, a job that's more X's and O's than managing personalities within the grand framework of your football team.
Your head coach in Seattle is Pete Carroll, and his job often is more about managing personalities within the grand framework of the team than it is X's and O's. Carroll comes to you when you're 3-2 and being written off as a defending Super Bowl champion. He tells you the best way to get better is to unload one of the league's most athletically gifted and versatile O's.
Bevell, the former Vikings offensive coordinator from 2006 to 2010, said he learned a lot from Carroll this year when he pulled the trigger that dumped Percy Harvin, the immensely talented, hard-working and oftentimes unmanageably volatile receiver/kick returner, for the Jets' fourth-round draft pick this year. The Vikings, who drafted Harvin in the first round in 2009, ran into the same problem, although a disagreement on money was a factor as well when they unloaded Harvin to Seattle before the 2013 season.
"Pete has been in it a long time, done it a long time," Bevell said Wednesday at the Seahawks Super Bowl hotel. "He's made a lot of hard decisions along the way. That was one that ended up being a huge decision, but in the long run, you could tell it was good for the Seahawks."
Seattle lost its first game without Harvin, dropping to 3-3, before going 11-1 to reach Super Bowl XLIX on Sunday.
"It's a difficult deal because you have a player who is so talented on the field and can do so many things," Bevell said. "Your mind is just going with all the positive things that he can do on the football field. Immediately, that's where your mind goes. It's like, 'OK, if we're going to miss that big chunk, now what are we going to do and how are we going to adjust?'"
Bevell will be a head coach at some point. He'll remember the Harvin situation and how Carroll handled it.
"Hopefully, you don't have to do decisions like that, but now and again they do come up," Bevell said. "It was good to be here to watch the whys and what-fors of that decision and what it came down to. And then, ultimately, being able to pull the trigger on that."
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