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I/O: Great image up there, Doc.
CRUNCH: That's exactly where the MEME'r would have been, you can bet your sweet patootie on that. However, the meme'r would do himself a favor to hit amazon.com and get a copy of the book.
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I/O: Carroll thinks it’s “been a great camp for the 12s” (?!) and the Seahawks have done a great job “connecting” with them. He used the word “connecting” three or four times.
CRUNCH: You have to look back a couple times, blink your eyes clear, to be certain he's not satirizing here.
He isn't. In Carroll’s book, he makes a big fat hairy deal out of his pre-game pep talks. He revisits several USC games where the pre-game motivation was supposed to be the turning point towards victory. Pete Carroll believes in total focus, total intensity, total buy-in to the mission at any cost.
Seen in that light, you can see how Carroll would view a subjective factor that --- > makes intensity a given. And more than that, the home crowd actually makes it more difficult for the road team to execute. No, the CLink crowd is a tangible, not intangible, factor in the game.
Carroll is indeed a coach who cracks out the electron microscope in his search for tiny advantages to help him “compete” harder. Looking at the Seahawk crowd, no electron microscope is necessary.
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I/O: Carroll looks tired. Finally.
CRUNCH: Time and tide wait for no man. Shocking when you can visibly watch the Presidency, or the Super Bowl pick, drain a man's youth from him.
But, "strength is to the young, wisdom to the old" ... still like his combination of the two ...
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I/O: Carrollism Of the Season: Win Resilient. Or however he gets the "Resilient" onto the bumper sticker. (Cliches and mottos are easy to remember in the fire of battle. Cliches and mottos are good. Cliches and mottos are our friends.)
CRUNCH: Resilient is a chemistry term, meaning bounce back into normal shape after compression. Has to do with toughness, I think. It's a rare ideal that can survive extreme pain. But what is your wager as to the outcome on this one?
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I/O: Carroll fields all tactical football questions, large and small, with the air of a world-class grandmaster discussing his favorite opening.
CRUNCH: It’s an amazing contrast to baseball, where Veteran Entitlement, reputation, and intuition guarantee your exalted position unto retirement. Ask Carroll an off-the-cuff question about whether some random 3rd-stringer is playing in the Bronco game and he’ll say “well, right now his rotator cuff isn’t as strong at 30 degrees so it affects his stunts in the 2nd-and-long packages …” maybe not quite, but that dude is BOOKED. UP.
Dr. D can tell when he is way over his head talking to somebody. He’d be glad to debate Lloyd McClendon on this or that baseball issue, but – believe it – he wouldn’t presume to ask Pete Carroll a question about football.
It’s a real pleasure to watch the man work.
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I/O: The Young Guys will play a lot tonight.
CRUNCH: Carroll writes that at USC, his single biggest recruiting advantage was that --- > every single freshman knew he would be competing for a starting spot from the first practice. :: Mike Hargrove runs screaming into the night ::
There are 9,000 advantages to this, but the one I like the best is what it says about Carroll's sincerity.
And in this particular game, it will be that much more fun to watch Tyler Lockett, Frank Clark and Jesse Williams.
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Boom shak-a-laka,
Dr D
