PREGAME. While allowing that Carroll is a great coach, SSI has deplored Carroll's craven mistake-avoidance orientation. We got plenty too much of this in the Knox years, and Carroll seems to out-Knox even Knox.
POSTGAME. Pete Carroll, in the third quarter, outcoached Mike Smith the way that --- > Mike Holmgren used to come out after halftime and restore order.
I don't know why Carroll has to have a gun to his head before he starts playing 21st-century football. But on the other hand, it's interesting to observe that he is perfectly capable of playing it.
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I loooaaaaathe Carroll's mistake-avoidance strategy, his belief that if you don't beat yourself, the other team might lose the game for you. That's just the wrong way to live life, much less to play sports.
But Pete Carroll the person is mondo cool -- a guy who is both the oldest* and the youngest coach in the NFL. We all want to be Pete Carroll, at least those of us past 30.
I love his 260 roster moves a year. I love the way he phrases everything in butterflies and rainbows, in sharp contrast to Mike Holmgren's and Chuck Knox' curmudgeonly "just trust me you morons" shtick. I love the way he keeps himself looking when he's long eligible for Denny's Discounts. Carroll is a forward-going man whose engine runs on hope, goals, and inspiration. He is a strategical pessimist but a personal optimist.
Lou Piniella his own self didn't maintain the same gusto for sports competition, at the same age.
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It's easy to understand the huge contract. With so incredibly much at stake all the time, you're lucky to have such a man as the face of your franchise.
The Mariners were secretly pleased to see Lou Piniella leave, in part because his personal sloppiness and crassness was embarrassing to the well-groomed attorneys in charge. They brought Mike Hargrove in, in large part because of Hargrove's dignity and presence.
This factor is often -- usually! -- overdone by executives in charge, because they are too close to the situation.
But not in Pete Carroll's case, boys, not in Pete Carroll's case. When the alternatives are Dennis "DUI" Erickson, Tom Flores, Jim Mora, or Jack "Biggest Loser" Patera... it means a whale of a lot to an NFL franchise to have a man like Pete Carroll under the microphone.
A Seahawk fan is simply proud to have Pete Carroll as his coach. That's all.
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Mariners segue: all y'all realize that this is the way the suits, and even the reporters feel about Eric Wedge, at the moment.
Wedge's competence, expertise, presence and personality has maintained his authority and dominance, even over the local press, and even through a 95-loss season. Wakamatsu, a fine leader, wiped out his motorcycle trying to drive it through much less oil on the asphalt.
Right now, Seattle has its sports teams in pretty good hands. There have been a few years when they didn't.
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