Pete Carroll has every right to come back to New York with a grudge. But it’s nearly 20 years later and in the all that time since the Jets fired him after a one-and-done season, he’s won two national championships at Southern Cal and now has the Seahawks in the Super Bowl while the Jets have won nothing.
Maybe it wouldn’t have been such a bad idea if the Jets let him stick around for a little bit longer.
Carroll hasn’t changed much in his let’s-have-fun approach and if it wasn’t for the gray hair, he would look 42 instead of 62, which makes him the second oldest coach in the NFL after Tom Coughlin. He still has all that enthusiasm, bounces around the sideline like a kid and might be the only head coach in the NFL that actually looks like he’s enjoying himself on game day instead of suffering.
He’s the NFL’s Peter Pan. And there is nothing wrong with that.
So with all that he’s accomplished, it must be gratifying for Carroll to come back to MetLife Stadium for Super Bowl XLVIII, a few hundred yards from where Dan Marino’s fake spike at the old Giants Stadium ruined the 1994 season and his Jets coaching career, and led to Leon Hess firing him.
“Not one bit of me feels that way,” Carroll told the Daily News. “I’m not bitter or pissed off or frustrated. I don’t feel like I have to prove anything. I don’t have that in me at all. Everybody feels I should. That was just one messy year, a one-shot deal. I thought it was a blast being in New York. I thought it was awesome. It was a great time to be in a setting of that magnitude.”
Hess was relaxing on the beach in the Bahamas in the days following another Jets season gone wrong when the oil baron’s daughter broke some news that surprised only Hess: The Eagles had fired his pal, the overmatched Rich Kotite.
Hess, who wasn’t moving well in those days, still managed to hustle inside to catch the report on CNN. It was true, amazingly enough, that Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie had fired Kotite after he lost his final seven games of the season, destroying a 7-2 start. Hess had a soft spot in his heart for Kotite from his seven years as a Jets assistant coach, the last five as offensive coordinator, when Hess would stand in the back of the coaches booth and Kotite made him feel like a real football guy.
NFL PHOTOS/NFL
Carroll's tenure with Gang Green is short and he loses his final five games before being fired.
Even so, Hess reacted to the news that Kotite was suddenly available in a way you might have anticipated had he been told that Vince Lombardi or George Halas was back from the grave or, just as unrealistic, that Jimmy Johnson, who had quit the Cowboys one year earlier after winning back-to-back Super Bowls, was interested in taking over Hess’ dysfunctional team.
From the Bahamas, he contacted the overseas operator and placed a call to Kotite, who thought somebody was pulling a practical joke on him. Hess offered to cut his vacation short if Kotite couldn’t wait for him to return. The expansion Panthers were interested, too, but Kotite assured Hess he would wait. It was Dec. 26. When Hess returned, they worked out a deal.
On the night of Jan. 4, Hess requested a meeting with Carroll. He had been the Jets’ defensive coordinator from 1990-93 under Bruce Coslet and was just one year into a four-year contract as the head coach. But the loss to Miami in a showdown for first place in the AFC East — the Jets led 24-6 late in the third quarter — was the first of five straight to end the 6-10 season. Hess caught Carroll completely by surprise when he asked to meet with him. The coach wasn’t expecting a raise but wasn’t expecting to hear, “You’re fired,” either.
“Shocking and sudden,” Carroll said.
Only the Jets could replace a coach with a five-game losing streak with a coach who had lost his last seven. Kotite was introduced as the coach with total control the next day. Hess acted completely on his own without the consent of the people around him.
“I’m 80 years old. I want results now,” Hess declared.
Kotite gave him results, for sure. They just weren’t any good. He was 3-13 his first year, 1-15 the next year and then he was gone, replaced by Bill Parcells.
Carroll was the ultimate players’ coach with the Jets and has been in his subsequent stops as the 49ers defensive coordinator for two years, Patriots head coach for three years, nine years at USC and now in his fourth season with the Seahawks. He was criticized with the Jets for putting up a basketball court, for taking the team bowling.
KEVIN LARKIN/AP
Leon Hess (l.) couldn’t wait to shake up Jets by hiring Rich Kotite (r.) in 1995 to replace Carroll (far l.), who gets just one year at helm of Gang Green. Kotite's tenure is a disaster as he goes 3-13 and 1-15.
He was way ahead of his time. Even Coughlin takes his team on outings now. What was perceived as a weakness of Carroll’s in reality was a strength. He knew how to relate to his players. He just needed better players. He lets players be themselves — Richard Sherman, for example — and they love playing for him.
“It’s not about going bowling, it’s not about shooting hoops, it’s about enriching times when guys are together,” Carroll said. “It’s not just about having fun. It’s about putting guys in different settings, a different mind-set to operate in.”
Of course, Carroll has put up a couple of hoops around the Seahawks facility. But it’s not so he can work on his jump shot. It’s all about bringing the team closer together.
Carroll resurrected his reputation after Hess dumped him by joining the 49ers. In a coaching round robin, he replaced defensive coordinator Ray Rhodes, who was hired as the Eagles’ coach to replace Kotite, who was hired as the Jets’ coach to replace Carroll.
At the time, Carroll had a choice between the 49ers, his hometown team, and the Broncos, where Mike Shanahan wanted him as defensive coordinator. Now he will face the Broncos. The 49ers were the model franchise at the time and spending two years around Bill Walsh and George Seifert and Steve Young helped make Carroll a better coach.
When Parcells worked his way out of New England to New York after taking the Patriots to the Super Bowl in 1996, owner Robert Kraft really wanted to promote Bill Belichick, who had joined Parcells’ staff that year. But Kraft felt he needed to make a clean break from the Parcells coaching tree and instead hired Carroll. Kraft felt Parcells had had too much power, so he made a mistake and limited Carroll’s control.
“They hired me to bring in the San Francisco system and it was not that way,” Carroll said. “That was frustrating. It had to do with the culture and the way you do things. I didn’t get a chance to do it. I didn’t have the control I thought I did. It just didn’t turn out the way I thought it was going to.”
BILL KOSTROUN/AP
Today, the enthusiastic Carroll returns to New Jersey for Super Bowl as coach of the NFC champions and says he does not hold grudge against Jets.
Carroll was 10-6 and won the AFC East in his first year with the Patriots. They beat Miami in the wild-card round but lost to the Steelers in the divisional round. New England was 9-7 in Carroll’s second year but lost in the first round to Jacksonville.
In his third year, Carroll was 8-8 and missed the playoffs. The Patriots had won fewer games each year and Kraft fired Carroll and replaced him with Belichick. It’s never easy replacing Parcells.
“Pete is one of the truly great guys in the coaching fraternity and I didn’t give him all the support he needed,” Kraft told me in my book, “Coaching Confidential.”
“Pete was inclusive. Look, in the end, I needed someone to make me feel good. It was good for me to have a guy like Pete Carroll because he’s my kind of guy. I mean, we loved Pete. You want Pete to marry into your family. I love the guy to this day. He’s an awesome guy.”
Carroll took a year off after Kraft fired him and then went to Southern Cal for nine years.
It was thought he was in his element and his coaching style would work better with college kids. He had incredible success and now will try to join Johnson and Barry Switzer as the only coaches to win NCAA titles and the Super Bowl.
He is always having fun, which makes him the same guy, but so much different than the rest of the coaching fraternity.
“I am doing what comes naturally,” he said. “It’s the love of the game, being totally involved and doing everything to help guys win.”
If Carroll ever had a chip on his shoulder after what Hess did to him, it fell off sometime in the last 20 years.
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