Why I want Pete Carroll to win the Super Bowl
It was 15 years ago as I was interviewing Pete Carroll in
his office at old Foxboro Stadium when I realized that his roots in Marin
County run deeper than Ross Valley.
His ties to Marin pre-date not only the
Vince Lombardi Trophy, but Vince Lombardi’s hey days in Green Bay.
Then head coach of the New England Patriots, Carroll
motioned me beside his desk and pointed at a large black-and-white portrait on
the wall. It was a panoramic view of a big lot and open space with tons of
trees and a mountain off in the distance, but I couldn’t place it as easy as I
could a Justin Bieber police mug shot.
Carroll told me it was aerial photo of Greenbrae taken from
the east looking west before the Bon Air Center was built in 1952. It was a
photo of his hometown before a shopping center, high-rise condos and too many
traffic lights appeared in the name of progress. It was a constant reminder of home -- where
their annual Turkey Bowl pick-up touch football game on Thanksgiving was born
and how much fun life was as a kid – just a few feet away over his left
shoulder as he sat at age 47 in his
chair.
At that time, in December 1998, Carroll was on top of the
world. His team had won the AFC East in his first year as the Patriots’ head
coach and they were on the verge of making the playoffs again in a brutal
division. A few days later, the Patriots rallied from a halftime deficit and
shutout Steve Young and the San Francisco 49ers’ offense in the second half for
a 24-21 victory, their fourth in their last five games.
However, something was missing from Carroll’s resume.
Something he longed for more than home.
Respect.
As close as Carroll was to a photo of his hometown, he was
not comfortable with the Patriots. For
starters, he was owner Robert Kraft’s second choice because Kraft wasn’t then
ready to hire Bill Belichick.
Carroll was stereotyped as California cool, too hip for
narrow-minded New England, a fun-loving, sandal-wearing, pop music-listening
surfer dude who was too cute and too soft for the hard knocks of the NFL and
Boston media and much too rah-rah for the win-or-be-chewed-up pro game. They
couldn’t understand or appreciate that there was a method to his gladness.
Carroll was criticized for being too energetic, too
positive, too nice. His enthusiastic way of coaching the pros was
unconventional and thus, critics assessed, forever doomed for failure in the
NFL.
The Patriots’ coach was the anti-Bill Parcells, merely a
substitute teacher employed after Parcells called in sick looking for more
player personnel control after leading the Pats to the Super Bowl in 1996.
Carroll fit into Massachusetts like a Yankees fan.
Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, Carroll wasn’t given
personnel control or enough input in attempting to draft and build the
post-Parcells’ Patriots. He had an owner who wasn’t as supportive or decisive
as needed to be and Carroll lost the best player on his team, Curtis Martin, to
free agency.
And so Carroll was fired by the Patriots at the end of the
1999 season. Before the age of 50, he was a twice-fired NFL head coach even
though he had only one losing season – his first with the New York Jets when
his team was dubbed “The Good Ship Lollipop” by the New York press.
Then came the 11-year itch. The one thing at the core of
Carroll’s spirit -- and it has and
should never be overlooked or underrated-- is his fierce competitiveness. He
loves to compete, whether it’s for the Super Bowl or the Turkey Bowl, against
the New York Giants or with the Redwood Pop Warner Junior Giants. He once
elbowed a Jets assistant coach so hard during a pick-up basketball game at team
headquarters that it opened a gash that required stitches to close.
For 11 years, Carroll privately harbored an obsession to be
a head coach again in the NFL. He craved another chance to compete against the
best football players and head coaches in the world. He wanted another shot to prove he could do
it, yet the circumstances needed to be that he could do it his way. It had to
be his personality and his philosophy moving forward.
He needed to scratch that itch. He sought respect.
That was hard to come by. Remember Carroll was the fourth choice to coach the USC Trojans
and yet, as he led them to two national championships, he eyed another
opportunity for the right fit to take him back to the NFL. He passed at other
offers before the Seattle Seahawks gave it to him and, unlike the Jets and
Patriots, they stuck with him. Back-to-back 7-9 seasons in Seattle were
rewarded because he showed his way – his woo-wwo laugh-in-the-face-of-adversity
coaching style -- could indeed work. He
could win and have fun at the same time.
Now, ironically, Carroll’s quest for the Super Bowl takes
him back to the very spot where he was first fired as a head coach. He is
taking his Super Bowl team from the northwest and returning to the northeast –
where most of his harsh critics from the past still reside – a team he
controlled and built and coached on his terms. He believed in the process – his
way – all along and now he gets to showcase it on the biggest stage in all of
sport. He could make history, becoming the first head coach to win a Super Bowl
after twice being fired as a head coach in the league.
The only shame of it is his proud parents aren’t alive. Rita, who died in 2000, and Jim, who died a
year later, lived together in Greenbrae for 45 years long before Bon Air Center
surrendered to development. When Pete became the Patriots coach, he bought them
a satellite dish so they wouldn’t have to go to the Flatiron in San Rafael to
watch his team’s games anymore. He
arranged for his dad to sit in the press box at Candlestick Park to watch him
bring the Patriots to play the 49ers in an exhibition game.
The kindness and
generosity of Carroll extends beyond his family to lifelong friends, including
his high school coach, the late Bob Troppmann whom Carroll phoned moments
before his first BCS national title game with USC in the Orange Bowl to ask
what call to make for the coin toss. On the eve of the NFC championship game
last week, Carroll called a friend in Marin when he heard his mother was ill.
And after the NFC title game, he began calling friends to give them tickets to
the Super Bowl.
They know Pete Carroll. They get Pete Carroll. He’s about taking care of people, including
his players, and he brings out the best in all of them. That’s his deal. He’s same guy who used to draw
plays in the sand at Stinson Beach in the summer time who has remained the same
guy today seeking the same thing, the one thing that has eluded him in the NFL,
as clear as that black-and-white photo of Greenbrae.
Respect.