National Football League

Pete Carroll on 'Today': 'I'm sleeping some' but can't stop thinking about Super Bowl

Published Feb. 5, 2015 9:24 a.m. ET

Brett Smiley

Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll joined Matt Lauer of “Today” for an interview Thursday and he sounded as much like a motivational speaker as a football coach.

Carroll discussed the heavily criticized play call that resulted in the fate-changing interception that lost Super Bowl XLIX, his bowled-over reaction, how the loss has impacted his sleep and whether the Seahawks will bounce back.

“It’s the worst result of a call ever,'' Carroll said of Malcolm Butler's interception of Russell Wilson’s final, fatal pass to Ricardo Lockette. "The call would have been a great one if we'd caught it. It would have been just fine and nobody would have thought twice about it. We knew we were going to throw the ball one time in the sequence somewhere, and so we did, and it just didn't turn out right.”

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Carroll said falling asleep hasn’t been difficult because of exhaustion, but falling back asleep after waking has presented a challenge. “I wake up and can't stop thinking about it." He said the rush of everything finally hit him emotionally around 4:05 a.m. Tuesday.

“Laying in bed with [his wife] in the middle of the night,” he said. “That was my opportunity to go ahead and visit it."

The coach reiterated the point that one moment isn't going to define the Seahawks. The sting of the loss won't evaporate, but Carroll insisted that it won’t define the organization.