INDIANAPOLIS — A year ago, when Amanda Ruller attended the NFL scouting combine for the first time, she was hoping to make some new acquaintances in the football coaching profession she had chosen to pursue.
When she attended it again last week she learned what a difference a year could make, as it now felt almost felt like going home — specifically when she ran into any of the Seahawks coaches.
It was at the combine in 2022 when Ruller, who had just finished her first season as a running backs coach at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, handed her résumé to anyone she could. One eventually landed in the hands of Seahawks personnel.
That led to her being named a few months later as a Seahawks intern for the offseason program, through training camp and into the preseason as an assistant running backs coach via the league's Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship.
It's a four-month period Ruller now calls "basically taking a master class in what football should be and should look like."
Those were lessons she took back with her to another season at McMaster.
She says that thanks in large part to her experiences with coach Pete Carroll, her goals are no longer about just getting a foot in the door of football but working at its highest level.
She first got into football from her dad, Edward, taking her to Saskatchewan Roughriders games. The 2021 season at McMaster had been her first as a full-time coach after years of working in football as a strength coach and working individually with players while also playing, notably with a Canadian national team at the 2017 IFAF Women's World Championship.
"As a new coach you don't have the confidence just yet," she said. "And as women, we are just getting these opportunities to coach and be in the industry and now I'm thinking, 'Do I deserve to be here?' And being part of the Seahawks was such an eye-opener and confidence builder for me saying, 'You know what? I do belong here and I feel like I do fit in.'
"... It made me feel like I could be a head coach someday just talking with Pete Carroll. I said, 'How do you see my potential? And he said, 'You could make it all the way to a head coach one day.' That made me feel so great in where I'm heading in this, and it is quite a journey, and I'm so excited to feel I'm going in the right direction and just learning from him. The sky is the limit now."
Ruller, who turned 35 this week, was reminded of that during her time in Indy last week when she ran into some of the Seahawks coaches, "seeing them just flooded back memories of my time there."
Among the Seahawks coaches she spent time with again at the combine was Carroll, whom she said told her he would make any calls to any teams for any jobs "because he believes in me that much."
For now, the native of Regina, Saskatchewan, plans to return to another season at McMaster in 2023.
But her connection with the Seahawks — she was the first woman to serve in an on-field coaching role with the team — has opened up some other doors including speaking engagements, one coming last fall at a sports management summit at Central Washington and another at Brown University.
It also helped inspire her to design and market her own football coach notebook that includes field diagrams for prospective coaches to use to draw in their own plays/alignments and/or practice plans.
She said she came up with the idea after often having to create her own diagrams of fields to then draw up a play on (it includes half-fields and red zones).
"I was drawing the hashes on a blank piece of paper all the time so I thought, 'Why don't I create something that is on the computer, just make a hash-field diagram and print it off and use it?' " Ruller said. "So I printed it off and created a little playbook for myself, a football notebook, and I was like, 'Why don't I sell this? I think other coaches would love this.' "
She put it for sale on Amazon in early February and said she thought she might sell 10 or so. Instead, she said at the combine she'd sold more than 100.
What she feels she mostly created over the last year, though, are memories and opportunities.
While busy with her job at McMaster in the fall, she also made sure to watch every play of every Seahawks game. She had written letters to every player she had coached after her internship ended following the second preseason game thanking them.
She said she watched with little surprise as the Seahawks became one of the shocking teams of the NFL, exceeding most predictions to finish with a winning record and a playoff berth, saying she'd sensed something special coming together during camp.
"It was kind of like watching a movie happen in slow motion because I was able to see the intricacies of that happen during the time I was there," she said.
She said watching it unfold led her to an even greater understanding of the value of belief.
"He (Carroll) had every athlete buying into what he was talking about he created such a culture that I think going forward I will coach just like that," she said.
But what she said may have been the biggest lesson she learned from Carroll was to also be herself.
Carroll has said often learning that lesson — and putting it into action — proved the turning point of his career after he'd been fired by the Jets and Patriots, deciding that if he ever got another head coaching opportunity he'd no longer act like the coach he thought he was supposed to be but the coach he actually was.
"The difference-maker was the confidence, finding my voice," she said of how she coached differently this year after her time with the Seahawks. "I think like anyone starting out I was a little bit shyer. And just being with Pete Carroll, he really brought out to me to be louder, be more excited. And I was like, 'You know what? Thank you, because no one has really offered me to have my own voice before,' and I super did with them. So I was able to go back, use my voice a little bit louder and be more excited and be able to say, 'OK, this is what I learned.' "
