Pete Carroll stands 60 minutes from the Lombardi Trophy because he never stopped believing in Pete Carroll. Nick Saban lasted two years with the Dolphins before he gave up on his NFL dream. Steve Spurrier lasted two years and returned to the cocoon of college football. Lou Holtz lasted 13 games in his 1976 disaster with the Jets.
It has taken Carroll 20 years — two decades after a fake spike changed everything for him — to show the NFL world he is no fake coach, he belongs with the elite of his profession. How fitting it is that he comes stalking the elusive Super Bowl title back here, because very much like Sinatra, he did it his way.
He never believed he was just an Energizer bunny suited for the college game and college kids, even after Jets owner Leon Hess whacked him after one season for Rich Kotite, even after Patriots owner Robert Kraft whacked him after three seasons because he wasn’t Bill Parcells, who preceded him, and he wasn’t Bill Belichick, who succeeded him.
“You knew that he was great at communicating with people,” Ronnie Lott recalled. “You knew that he was great at teaching the game — he loves teaching, to the point where in my 13th or 14th year, playing for him, I learned a lot about the game. And he made it fun.”
Lott was at the end of a Hall of Fame career when the 1994 Jets unraveled and Carroll could not stop the bleeding after Dan Marino opened the wound at a shell-shocked Giants Stadium.
“I think that it unraveled after the fake spike because — which he’s learned, which a lot of people learn — it’s not winning that you have to learn,” Lott said. “It’s learning how to keep it together when people are losing. Bill Walsh had to go through it, all the great coaches have to go through it, right? And they had to learn how to keep it together when everything’s falling apart.”
Parcells was 3-12-1 as a rookie Giants coach and thought he was a goner. Belichick failed in Cleveland, and was 5-11 in his first season with the Patriots.
“The common goal of playing for something was not there,” Lott said. “And what I mean by that is, some people might have been playing for just to get to the playoffs, right? Some people were trying to play to get back to the Super Bowl. Some people, they were just trying to play for the Jets. … Everybody would probably tell you that when that game went in that direction, people went in different directions.
“And so, I think the reason it fell apart was that there was no glue, if you will. Where now, if you say the strength of that team, when I watch ’em play or when people talk about ’em, everybody talks about how they want to play for each other.”
As Carroll’s 6-5 Jets team became 6-10, Hess’ perception was his coach had lost the team.
“What I thought happened was, you had a team that lost a game that still could not get over the fact that they lost that game,” Lott said. “As John Madden would say, we might have let too much of the hose out.”
There are different ways for an NFL coach to skin a cat. You never saw Tom Coughlin shooting hoops with his assistant coaches in the parking lot. Carroll was years ahead of his time with this unconventional idea the NFL workplace should be a fun environment. He has a gift of walking the tightrope between allowing his players freedom of expression and maintaining discipline. He’s 62 years old and forever young, a salt-and-peppery kid at heart who loves what he does every day he does it. Super Sunday is Super Funday for Pete Carroll. Every Sunday is.
“All the guys that I played with back there all felt that Pete was a guy who made you want to play,” Lott said. “Would that have helped get guys over the hump? I don’t know. But I do know that quality still exists, and that quality is why they’re where they’re at, right? That hasn’t changed. That’s the reason I came and wanted to play for him because that quality of trying to get you ready to elevate to a certain level. To me, that’s the essence of being a great coach, it’s what the essence of being a great teacher, is when you can get a kid to maximize his effort.
“To me, that was what Bill [Walsh] did, that’s what Belichick does, and I’m sure that that’s what Pete tried to do all the time.”
So all these years later, Pete Carroll has earned a chance at the ultimate catch: the Lombardi Trophy.
“I look back on that,” Lott said, “and I remember, like a lot of people, we were all stunned that he had only one year.”