It was 30 years ago when Pete Carroll got his first head coaching gig. In four seasons with the Jets and Patriots, he found himself hovering around .500 and not seeing any progress in the win column.
It wasn’t until he took over as the head coach at USC that Carroll really had success. And it happened quickly.
His second season, the Trojans went he Orange Bowl and finished as the fourth ranked team in the nation. And Carson Palmer was a breakout super star.
In Carroll’s third season, the Trojans finished as the number one ranked team in the country. A season later, they were National Champions.
In his introductory press conference on Monday, Carroll pointed to his experience at USC and in Seattle as proof he knows how to take a struggling program and raise it to another level. Which is just what the Raiders are looking for him to do.
“I’ve had great opportunities to start up programs that have faltered in the past,” said Carroll.
“I look back at the days in Los Angeles, at SC, as really the building blocks of the philosophy that we were able to take to Seattle . . . in both situations, it just took us a couple years to get going. I know that rhythm, and I am expecting that rhythm. I’m anticipating that we’re going to find that rhythm right here, right now, here in Vegas. With the Raiders and this opportunity, I feel like I’ve been there before, and I’m going to bank on that.”
He then reiterated and emphasized how similar he sees the situation in Las Vegas in an interview with the What the Football podcast the following day.
“It’s very similar. And I’m hoping the commonality of the challenge will bring out the best in us,” Carroll said of the Raiders job compared to the USC job.
The veteran head coach’s work helping turn Carson Palmer’s career around in particular should have Raiders fans feeling a rare sense of hope after spending the better part of the last decade yearning for a quarterback situation they could be legitimately excited about.
“The Carson Palmer story, that’s an amazing story that was at the start and at the heart of our unveiling of how we did things,” Carroll continued. “And how we dealt with people and how to turn things around. Because Carson was really struggling back in that time. And it took us a year, but by the second year he won the Heisman, he was the first player in the draft picked. He was always worthy of that physically. He was capable. But it hadn’t come to fruition for him.”
What Carroll did to aid the likes of Palmer and Russell Wilson and Geno Smith to have success offers some insight into how he plans on doing the same with the Raiders.
“All of what it took to get that done wasn’t just Carson,” Carroll added. “It was building the team around him and creating the balance that good teams have that you can count on and they take care of the football and they use the clock well, and they run the football, and they have the fourth quarter to show off that running game, to finish games off with consistency. All those things that help the quarterback be successful.
“Here it is again. We have to do that again. And we don’t know who the quarterback is right now, we’ll figure that out, but it’s going to come from the same source of creating a really good team around that position. Everybody thinks it’s just that guy. It isn’t. It’s the whole thing. You have to create the support system that allows you to be really uncommonly consistent.”
He’s right. A quarterback is only as successful as his coaching and the team around him. It’s the reason Patrick Mahomes keeps making Super Bowls while Josh Allen falls just short. Mahomes has better coaching.
Make no mistake, however, this doesn’t mean Carroll is of the mind that he can win with just anyone at QB so long as that QB has a good team around him. He said it isn’t JUST that guy. But it is ALSO that guy. And the Raiders don’t have that guy…yet.
That being said, the Raiders need a lot more than that guy. So, Carroll’s task will be finding his quarterback while also making sure that guy is set up for success.
He had that guy at USC in Carson Palmer, who he noted had all the tools. And Matt Leinart after that. And Mark Sanchez after that. The result was seven-straight years ranked in the top four in the nation, six Bowl wins, and a National Championship.
That’s to say nothing of his two trips to the Super Bowl and hoisting the Lombardi in his fourth season with the Seahawks.
The track record is there. Offering plenty of excitement that, even at the age of 73, he can do the same with the Raiders.
