Las Vegas Raiders players are already becoming familiar with the unique personality of head coach Pete Carroll.
NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported that Carroll “kicked through a whiteboard, smashing it” during a team meeting the day before a 20-13 victory over the New England Patriots in Week 1.
“One source described Carroll like a WWE wrestler cutting a promo, showing the team that it didn’t fly to New England to mess around,” Rapoport said. “The Raiders came to compete. The blasted whiteboard was the fallout.”
One day away from celebrating his 74th birthday, Carroll clearly hasn’t lost the energy he brought to his previous stops at USC and the Seattle Seahawks.
If the Raiders did get any sort of emotional lift from his impassioned speech, then the effect was fleeting. Las Vegas scored on its opening drive but trailed 10-7 at halftime.
Maybe another talk from Carroll inside the locker room did the trick.
Safety Isaiah Pola-Mao intercepted a Drake Maye pass on the first drive of the third quarter, and the Raiders reclaimed the lead on a three-yard touchdown run by Ashton Jeanty.
It was a stretch to call Carroll the proverbial home-run hire for Las Vegas. The Seahawks missed the playoffs in two of his last three years there, and they were regressing badly on offense. Carroll’s emphasis on the running game also makes him a bit of an outlier in today’s coaching ranks.
But there’s no question the Super Bowl XLVIII winner is a tone-setter behind the scenes, and that’s exactly what the Raiders needed after languishing for so long.
“That’s just Pete. That’s how he turns the culture around,” one source told Rapoport of the animated talk last Saturday.
Carroll signed a three-year contract that includes a team option for Year 4. Even if Las Vegas doesn’t make a deep playoff run during that time, his presence may pay dividends that extend beyond his tenure.
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