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Carroll wants a voice in clarifying CBA contact rules

LOS ANGELES -- The NFL gave the Seattle Seahawksa stern slap on the wrist this month for running practices deemed too physical under the rules of the new collective bargaining agreement.

Seattle lost its final two OTA sessions and one workout because of the infraction. It wasn't exactly back-breaking discipline, but it was enough to send some head coaches through the roof.

That's not Pete Carroll's style. The Seahawks coach agrees with Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy and others who feel the league has failed to clarify the contact limits, but Carroll has already moved on.

"Nobody really knows what it was," Carroll told ATL at an event publicizing NFL's "Play 60" initiative on Monday. "So I didn't tip-toe into it, we wanted to go see what we could get out of it, and the league took a look at it and said our guys were playing too aggressive in practice. So, OK, we get docked a little bit for that but we were trying to make the most of a situation that was not guided very clearly.

"There were some things written, but there's always been some things written. We saw no tape, nobody showed us, nobody talked to us about it. I have no remorse about it at all; we got 10 OTAs in eight days, that's all I can tell you."

What can be done to make the limits clearer to teams?

"We're going to contribute to that. I've already told the league that I want to be part of that," he said. "Have practices that are demonstrative of what they want, so we can pass around and guys can see what the tempo is, because we don't know.

"It's unfortunate that somebody had to get popped on this thing, with the kind of instruction initially we had on it, but the league tried hard and they couldn't get enough done, from the players' side of it. It's behind us and we don't care, but hopefully next time we'll have a better understanding of it."

It's surprising 32 teams went into offseason activities without a clear idea of the limits on contact, but Carroll wants to be part of the solution going forward.

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