DENVER — America saw him floating on Cloud 9, woo-hooing along with his 12th Man and his Seahawks as if he was 12-year-old boy rather than a 62-year-old football Peter Pan, skipping giddily towards MetLife Stadium and Super Bowl XLVIII.
As he met the media back in Seattle Monday, Pete Carroll still hadn’t come down to earth, and who could blame him? He had vanquished his old rival Jim Harbaugh and the 49ers to win the NFC Championship and validated a most unorthodox coaching style that favors individuality and freedom of expression over tough love.
It took Pete Carroll 20 years to get to this delicious moment, one even he couldn’t possibly have imagined when Jets owner Leon Hess fired him after a 6-10 season in 1994, his first and only season as Jets head coach, and turned his world upside down.
“That was kind of a hairy time,” Carroll recalled Monday.
Was it ever.
The news the Jets had fired the 43-year-old Carroll was broken by WFAN, the club’s flagship station at the time, on the morning of Jan. 5, 1995.
“I actually remember the day it happened,” said Boomer Esiason, now an FAN morning man and CBS analyst, then the Jets’ lefty starting quarterback.
“I walked in [to Weeb Ewbank Hall at Hofstra] to pick up the end-of-the-season check that you would pick up, and I remember I was going to go in and have a meeting with him.
“And I looked out the window, and I saw Richie Kotite coming into the building. I thought maybe we had hired Richie as a tight end coach or … I mean, I figured that there had to be a relationship between Richie and Pete because we practiced with the Philadelphia Eagles at Hofstra that summer.
“Little did I know that he was coming to be not only the head coach, but he was going to be the grand poobah of the entire Jet organization. I was stunned. I was stunned that it happened. And to this day, I’ve never ever gotten an answer as to what happened.”
Kotite had been fired after four seasons by the Eagles, where he compiled a 36-28 record (plus 1-1 in the postseason). Jets owner Leon Hess revered him so much Carroll, who had replaced Bruce Coslet, was fired after the 1994 season spiraled out of control with five straight losses following Dan Marino’s infamous fake spike.
Hess’ decision didn’t surprise one prominent Jet.
“I was not shocked at all,” defensive end Jeff Lageman recalled.
Less than three months after Carroll had been hired — and still six months from his first game as a head coach — two-time Super Bowl coach Jimmy Johnson announced he was walking away from Jerry Jones and the Cowboys.
“I’ll never forget sitting in [public relations director] Frank Ramos’ office with [team president] Steve Gutman sitting in a chair and they were watching the TV with the Jimmy Johnson leaving Dallas press conference,” Lageman said.
“And Gutman said, ‘F–k, it looks like we hired a head coach too soon.’
“That’s how much of a chance Pete was given.
“When Gutman made that comment about Pete — and I was already angry that they fired Bruce, and that [GM] Dick Steinberg was trying to save his rear end — that made me very angry. I said, ‘Man, I’ve got to get out of here — unless Pete is still here.’ ”
Carroll, a disciple of Vikings coach Bud Grant, landed with the Jets in 1990. He had been Coslet’s young, bright, energetic, fun-loving defensive coordinator on a fast track to success.
“If you remember, Pete was a hot property in the NFL at that time,’’ Esiason said. “He was the young and up-and-coming defensive coordinator that everybody loved and he was doing things on defense that very few people were doing.”
Carroll was unlike any head coach any of them had encountered. That was him playing three-on-three basketball on the painted court in the parking lot with his coaches after practice.
“We had shooting contests with each different position group putting up some money and it was winner-take-all,” Lageman said. “We had a home run derby. We went out bowling. He did all kinds of things to break the monotony and have fun. Pete was very much into making players enjoy the ride instead of worrying only about the result all the time.”
“The most important thing Pete had was the bond between him and his players, the childlike, high school, teenaged bond that goes way beyond your job,” placekicker Nick Lowery said. “Pete understood that every great coach cares about his players so sincerely that they get it, they know it, so they’re willing to sacrifice more for you.”
Carroll’s exuberance sometimes crossed the line, as it did in a December 1992 game after Dolphins kicker Pete Stoyanovich missed an extra point that kept the Jets in the lead. Carroll flashed a choke sign that was caught on TV, and later had more egg on his face when Stoyanovich made a winning kick. But when the Jets decided they’d had enough of Coslet, Carroll was their man.
Carroll’s 1994 Jets opened with a smashing 23-3 victory in Orchard Park against a Bills team that came in as four-time defending AFC champs.
“The first game of that year Pete gets us together the night before the game and said, ‘All right guys, I want you to close your eyes and envision yourselves coming onto the field with confidence,” Lowery said. “ I want you to see us executing with tremendous focus and fearless confidence and I want you to see us making plays.’
“Then he said, ‘Now I want you to see us walking off the field victorious, I want you to feel what that feels like.’”
“It put us in an incredible mood and we beat the living s–t out of the reigning AFC champion Bills in Buffalo. That was the potential I saw in Pete Carroll right away.”
The next week they beat the Broncos 25-22 at home in overtime, then answered a three-game losing streak with two more home wins against the Colts and Bill Parcells’ Patriots.
The Jets were 6-5 and playing for the division lead after Thanksgiving when Marino brought the Dolphins back from a 24-6 deficit in the most demoralizing way possible.
With seconds remaining, Marino shouted “clock, clock, clock,” at the line of scrimmage, then fired a touchdown pass to Mark Ingram against unsuspecting rookie cornerback Aaron Glenn. The fake-spike play earned an immediate spot in Jets’ infamy.
And this particular group never recovered emotionally.
“I can’t believe that a group of men would allow one play in one particular game to completely undercut an entire season, but I guess that’s what happened to us,” Esiason said. “And from my perspective, all I can tell you is that I never really figured out an answer as to what happened to that game and why he ever got fired. I never knew the answer for that.”
Lageman, the Jets’ first-round pick in 1989, has his own ideas.
“The whole premise of Pete being the head coach was a win-now or they were going to blow it up, and we all kind of felt that,” Lageman said. “To be in the position that we were in and things went bad … it was like we lost more than just one game. We weren’t able to bounce back.’’
Carroll benched strong safety Brian Washington and fullback Brad Baxter before the next-to-last game of the season against the Chargers.
“A change of pace to make something happen,” Carroll said at the time. It made turmoil happen, as Washington, cornerback James Hasty and offensive tackle Jeff Criswell refused to go into the game in the second half of a season-ending loss to the 1-14 Oilers in Houston.
“I do remember that was a time when some of some guys wanted to do some things differently and that was something Pete was fighting against,” wide receiver Rob Moore said.
Carroll was certain, however, he would be back for the 1995 season.
“I remember talking to Pete after our last game,” Esiason said. “He said, ‘You know Boomer, there are going be a lot of changes around here and you’re going to appreciate those changes.’ ”
Moore agrees Carroll didn’t see the ax coming..
“I know he was stunned that he got fired, because I met with him in the morning before it happened and we talked about the possibility of the team franchising me that next season and he told me not to get frustrated,” Moore said. “I got the call that evening from him and he said, ‘Hey Rob, I just wanted to let you know I just got fired.’ I was shocked.’”
Hess said at the press conference to introduce Kotite, “I’m 80 years old and I want results now. I’m entitled to some enjoyment, and that means winning.”
What Hess got from Kotite was the darkest two-year period in the history of the Jets, a 4-28 embarrassment.
Moore, the Jets’ lone Pro Bowler in Carroll’s lone season, would be shocked again right before the 1995 NFL Draft when Kotite traded him to Arizona for a first-round pick, which became tight end Kyle Brady instead of Hall of Fame defensive tackle Warren Sapp. Lageman was a free agent after the ’94 season and fled to Jacksonville.
Lowery wrote Carroll a couple of weeks ago. “Saying what a tragedy it was for me to end my career with Richie Kotite when I had arguably one of the most dynamic coaches in the NFL taken away from me,” Lowery said.
Carroll would go on to be a defensive coordinator in San Francisco and head coach in New England before winning two national titles at USC.
Esiason has not been surprised at Carroll’s success.
“The amazing thing to me is that, for the most part, I thought everybody on our team loved him,” Esiason said. “I guess there were some issues with the secondary late in that season, and I don’t know all the issues that were going on there, but I had a great time with him, and as a quarterback. I appreciated the way he ran practice, the way he prepared us for all types of situational football, the way that he presented the game plan each and every week. I knew he was going to be a success, I guess he just happened a little bit too early in New York.”
Moore only wishes Carroll had gotten the chance to prove it.
“I still wonder what that team would have been like had he come back in the 1995 season,” Moore said. “I think we would have had a pretty special team.
“It’s a shame he never got another chance to coach that team.’’