A young, untested NFL head coach would find it pretty daunting to join a division that includes Andy Reid, Sean Payton and Jim Harbaugh.
That’s the kind of challenge that appeals to Pete Carroll.
It’s one of several reasons the Las Vegas Raiders were wise to choose him as their next head coach. That’s an organization searching for an identity and unmoored from its past. The club was relevant a generation ago.
The Raiders haven’t won a postseason game since the AFC championship against Tennessee in early 2003, back when Carroll was first righting the ship at USC. The Raiders have returned to the playoffs twice since losing that Super Bowl to Tampa Bay, with one-and-done appearances in 2016 and 2021.
What Carroll will do for that organization is just what he did at USC and with the Seattle Seahawks. He will reshape the culture, clear out the deadwood and refine the focus on competition.
“Pete is exactly what the Raiders needed at this moment,” said Scott Fitterer, who was Carroll’s vice president of football operations with the Seahawks. “He’s the guy who’s going to get this right.”
By taking a three-year deal with the option for a fourth, he’s betting on himself. That’s an unusually short agreement and an indication he’s wagering he can whip this U-turn quickly even without an answer at quarterback. The shorter deal also is enticing to a promising assistant coach or coordinator who aspires to be a head coach. It’s clear that Carroll isn’t planning to be there forever.
At 73, Carroll will be the oldest head coach in league history but age doesn’t really apply to this guy, not in the traditional sense. He’s got the energy of a kid.
In 2012, early in his career with the Seahawks, Carroll opened the doors to spend a week with the team during the season. I was given an office next to his and free reign to join any meeting and hang out beginning when he got to the facility before dawn until he left long after dark.
There was an endearing exuberance to him, not only in his enthusiasm and the way he connected with players, but also in the way he ran the building. He had basketball hoops everywhere, including Nerf hoops in the doorways. He left the music on in his office — Macklemore was big at the time — and soup bowls would stack up on his desk.
When Carroll would leave his office for a meeting, his executive assistant, Dawn Beres, would turn down the music, turn off the TV and gather his dishes.
“Sometimes,” she told me at the time, “I feel like I’m living next to my teenage son.”
In short, Carroll is going to connect with his players and he’ll probably have his sons working with him. The Carolina Panthers just parted ways with his son, Nathan, who had been their passing-game coordinator. Brennan is the offensive coordinator and offensive line coach at the University of Washington. He easily could wind up working for his father.
After all, Steve Belichick, who was defensive coordinator for the Huskies, just joined his dad Bill’s staff at North Carolina. It had to appeal to Carroll, the notion of potentially working with his sons.
Presumably, Tom Brady played a significant role in hiring Carroll. They were on opposite sides in the Super Bowl and not long from now will be teammates in Canton. They share a strong mutual respect.
The late Al Davis was a trendsetter, and that was often on display with the head coaches he hired, whether that was Tom Flores or Art Shell, or the surprisingly young John Madden and Jon Gruden. So it’s interesting that the Raiders would go to the opposite end of the spectrum and hire a coach in the deep twilight of his career.
Carroll joins Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer as the only coaches to win both a college football national championship and a Super Bowl. Harbaugh has come close, winning a national title with Michigan and falling just short in a Super Bowl to his older brother, John, coach of the Baltimore Ravens.
There were three rules that Carroll demanded his Seattle players live by:
1. Protect the team. That meant the team came first. So be mindful of your teammates on and off the field. If you see them on the verge of making a mistake, or doing something that’s going to get them in trouble, the onus is on you to step in and correct the situation. At practice, you’re not trying to deliver those crushing hits. The team has to be at the forefront.
2. No whining, no complaining, no excuses. If it’s raining, Carroll doesn’t want to hear your gripes. Hey, it’s a good opportunity to practice wet-ball drills. Look for the silver lining in every situation.
3. Be early. That sounds simple, but it’s a sign of respect. If you’re stumbling into a meeting late, you’re putting your time above the team’s time. Have respect for the greater good.
Quarterback Matt Hasselbeck was 35 when Carroll arrived at the Seahawks, and it would rub him the wrong way when people would suggest the coach was going to “change the culture” of the franchise.
This was a team that reached the Super Bowl with Mike Holmgren as coach, and Hasselbeck didn’t feel the culture was in need of fixing.
“It didn’t sit right with me,” Hasselbeck said. “It felt like we were winning our division every year. … But Pete really did a great job of instilling his culture in that building right away. Even though I believed in the culture that we had, his culture was different and it took us somewhere else as a team. He had a plan.”
If anything, the Raiders are a team in need of a plan. Carroll provides that.
