If the Seattle Seahawks enjoy a successful 2016 season, it will not be because of carne asada tacos. What those carne asada tacos represent, however, has plenty to do with Seattle's success this year and in previous seasons under head coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider.

But before we get to the tacos, which are delicious, by the way, first a story about Carroll, Hall of Fame coach Bud Grant and analytics. Yes, this story is a little bit all over the place, but ultimately it's a story about Carroll and the culture he and general manager John Schneider have built in Seattle, and when it comes to Carroll, things tend to move at high speeds and occasionally appear chaotic even when they're not, so just bear with us.

Back when Carroll was a young assistant coach in Minnesota in the 1980s, Grant sensed a change coming in football. Despite his old-school reputation, Grant was a forward thinker, and he saw that computers were going to greatly alter the way teams could study their own tendencies, and more importantly, their opponents'.

"Bud was one of the early adopters of football analytics," said Brian Eayrs, the Seahawks' research analyst. "He was really creative, really innovative. He saw in the 1980s that football was starting to turn into a world of information that could be easily gathered and summarized with a computer."

When Grant realized he needed somebody to help the Vikings make sense of the new information computers were making available to them and other teams, Carroll told his boss that he knew a guy—Carroll always knows a guy—which is how the Vikings came to hire Mike Eayrs, Brian's father, who went on to a long career in the NFL with Minnesota and Green Bay. Decades later, Carroll decided his Seahawks needed to bolster their research department, so he reached out to the elder Eayrs, who told Carroll about his son Brian, a former Division III coach who was working for STATS, LLC at the time.

So where are we going with all of this?

Of all the things that help shape Carroll's philosophy on coaching—on life really—one of the most important is an idea that sounds simple, but is actually rather complex in its application: helping people be the best they can be. And an important distinction to make here is that the focus isn't on helping an athlete be the best football player he can be, but on helping that individual be the best person he can be. Take care of that first, and the football part will follow.

As Dr. Michael Gervais, a high performance psychologist who works closely with the Seahawks describes it, "We are humans first, then we're human doers."

"It's really important to us to reach into as much as we can be involved," Carroll said. "It's the whole package of the player that's crucial in helping him be his best, because we see things carry over so much. We recognize that their off-the-field life has something to do with their on-field life. So we're trying to support them and help them find their best in all areas. We take a lot pride in doing that."

One of the many keys to Carroll's success as a coach is the way he has embraced individualism. A big part of that is simply allowing players to be themselves, but there's more to it than not trying to suppress Michael Bennett or Richard Sherman's outspokenness, or than not trying to contain Doug Baldwin's passion. For the Seahawks to truly be at their best, Carroll and Schneider want players, coaches, scouts and pretty much everyone in the building to have at their disposal resources that can help them maximize their potential. For some, that's Dr. Gervais, for others it's Maurice Kelly, the team's vice president of player engagement, while for others still it's nutritionist Michele Clarke-Mason and executive chef Mac McNabb, or director of player health and performance Sam Ramsden, or Eayrs, whose research helps coaches and personnel people self-scout and also spot, "league-wide trends that might help us win."

"Everybody that contributes has a very crucial role," Carroll said. "And some guys have a more crucial role with some players than others, it depends on the makeup and what the situation is for the young man. Dr. Gervais and Mo (Kelly) and everyone else fit in where they do to do their things they do well. That's why it's really important to have a really diverse group with various skills so we can be there to meet the needs of different players."

Not every player utilizes those resources equally, but they all appreciate having so much available to them. And they appreciate a coach who encourages them to spend the few weeks not just preparing for the season, but also openly discussing pressing social issues while engaging in healthy debates on how best to express themselves and their concerns.

"One of the things Pete really focuses on is the entirety of the person," Sherman said. "He focuses on your purpose beyond the game. That's really important, because a lot of coaches don't think about that—they're trying to get as much as they can out of a player while he's in their building, then once he's not, they couldn't care less. Pete's a little different. As much as a coach can care about a player within the business of football, he does. He maximizes that. That's shown by his action, in having all these resources in the building. They don't have to have that, that's not a mandatory thing every team does, but that's something he believes is necessary to help his players."