MEDFIELD, Mass. — Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll, who left this town in 2000, says he cannot remember ever going back. He need not worry. His sterling reputation endures in Medfield, a community 25 minutes from Gillette Stadium in Foxborough.  Things have changed, of course. The family-owned department store, Lord’s, is now a marketplace, and Medfield Seafoods, which sold oven-ready haddock that was to die for, is now a Chinese restaurant. The gas station at the center of town is now a Starbucks.  But 15 years later, Carroll’s four years on Snow Hill Lane, when he was coach of the New England Patriots, still reverberate in both the neighborhood and the community.  Barbara Cincotta, whose family lived across the street from the Carrolls, called them a wonderful family and ideal neighbors.  “If I had to handpick a neighbor, it would be them,” she said.  Her son, Jason, remembered impromptu football games with Pete Carroll and his son Nate and whoever else happened by.  “Sometimes we’d go to his house and watch the late games with him on Sunday, and he’d be there, breaking things down,” Jason Cincotta said. “It was awesome.”  Lyndsay Church, whose family moved into the Carrolls’ original house on Snow Hill Lane, a cul-de-sac of million-dollar homes, remembered a concerned Pete Carroll getting her in to see the Patriots’ team physician for a broken kneecap.  “He was always great to us,” Church said. “They all were.”  You can search all over this town of 12,000 and hear nary a discouraging word about the Carrolls. But what about the people who put all those for-sale signs on the Carrolls’ front lawn in 1999, his last year as the coach of the Patriots?  “Out-of-towners,” said Barbara Cincotta, who has since moved to Florida.  The Carrolls moved here in August 1997, when Pete took over as the Patriots’ coach. In January 1999, the family moved next door, where it stayed for Carroll’s final season with New England and the next year, 2000, when he was a consultant until Southern California hired him in mid-December. The family sold the second Medfield home in 2001.  Asked last week if he had returned to the neighborhood, Carroll said: “I know my wife has gone back a number of times to visit friends. I don’t know if I’ve been back at all. I don’t think I have.”  This rapidly growing town has also been home to Drew Bledsoe and the former New England head coaches Raymond Berry and Ron Erhardt. Glena Carroll, Pete’s wife, zeroed in on Medfield in part because of the high school’s outstanding volleyball program. The couple’s daughter, Jaime, was a star on Medfield’s 1998 state volleyball championship team.  The Seattle Seahawks coach talked about how he learned from previous experience coaching the Jets and the New England Patriots.  Pete Carroll did a lot more than play pickup football and basketball games in the neighborhood. He is largely responsible for the installation of turf at the high school football field and for starting the town’s middle school interscholastic sports program, starting with the football team. Glena Carroll, herself a volleyball player, coached the junior varsity team at the high school. The Carrolls funded a sand volleyball court at the high school — and helped spread the sand when it was laid. Pete Carroll wrote a check for $5,000 to keep the high school gym open at night throughout one summer.  “The Pete Carroll story in Medfield is pretty cool,” said Jon Kirby, a former athletic director at Medfield High School. “He was the best. They were the best. They still are the best.”  Kirby said his first memory of the Carrolls in Medfield was of them planting decorative flowers around the middle school.  “They were just out there, on their own, getting themselves immersed in the community,” he said.  Not long after, Pete Carroll was in Kirby’s office wondering why there was no football program at the middle school, where Nate Carroll would soon be enrolled. Most of the boys played Pop Warner, but Pete Carroll envisioned a middle school program that would serve as a feeder for the high school.  He invited Kirby and the football coach to a Patriots practice (at the time, the team practiced at the Wrentham State School) and then to lunch. A fourth person joined them — a representative from the N.F.L., which had set aside money to fund programs for youth football.  “They gave us $10,000,” Kirby said, “and the next year, we had a program. It was wildly popular.” A few years later, Medfield, with many of those former middle school players on the team, won a Super Bowl, the top honor in its division.  Carroll found time to attend games when he could. At the season finale for the middle school team one year, Kirby said, the referees assigned to the game did not show up. Kirby was dispatched to his office to get a pair of whistles, and he and Carroll refereed the game.  When the high school decided it needed a turf field, Carroll and Bledsoe put on a fund-raiser. Two years later, the turf field was installed. Bledsoe paid for cleats for the team.  When the Carrolls asked the volleyball coach, Jack Hastings, what was needed for the program, he said he had always wanted a sand volleyball court. Soon after, the Carrolls were spreading the sand on the new court at the high school.  Carroll spent three hours one night delivering a coaching clinic at the high school.  “He talked about teaching, learning and athletics,” Kirby said. “My one regret is that I never taped it. But the most important thing that I took away was that he was an educator. Coaches need to teach, not just their players but their own assistant coaches.”  After three seasons with New England, during which the team regressed from A.F.C. East champion (10-6 in 1997) to A.F.C. East cellar dweller (tied with the Jets at 8-8 in 1999), the Patriots fired Carroll and replaced him with Bill Belichick.  Nate Carroll, 27, now an assistant wide receivers coach on his father’s staff, said that the family’s old neighbors were supportive but that it was sometimes tough to hear fans criticize his father.  “I don’t know anybody there who wasn’t a Patriots fan,” he said. “They were brutal, though, at the games; I’ll tell you that much.” He added: “Everyone just wants to win there. It’s a very strong fan base.”  The family remained in Medfield until Pete Carroll was hired by U.S.C.  “We talked a lot that year between jobs,” Kirby said, “and the time off gave him a clear vision of what he would and would not do. The key for him was to have control. He wanted to have a say. He didn’t have that with New England.”  But he did at U.S.C., and he does at Seattle. Carroll joked last week that he might still be with New England had Tom Brady come along sooner. He added, “I’ll never know that, and I’m going to take it for the way it happened.”  Pete Carroll may be more than a decade and two teams removed from his days on Snow Hill Lane, but it is not outlandish to suggest that there is a lot of divided loyalty in some parts of this town for the Super Bowl.  “I’ve been a Patriots fan all my life, but I’m also rooting for Pete,” Kirby said.  The Cincottas, who have Patriots season tickets, will not be unhappy with either result. As New England fans, they would love to see a fourth N.F.L. championship for their team. But a Seattle victory would resonate as well.  “It would certainly be my silver lining,” Jason Cincotta said. “I always love seeing Pete do well.”  Melissa Hoppert contributed reporting from Phoenix.  A version of this article appears in print on January 29, 2015, on page B12 of the New York edition with the headline: Carroll Has Fan Club Deep in Patriots Territory. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Carroll’s former neighbors in Medfield, Mass., fondly recalled what he did for the town when he lived there, and some said they would even root for him in the Super Bowl.