pete carroll
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Las Vegas Raiders head coach Pete Carroll.
The Las Vegas Raiders didn’t hire Pete Carroll to be a one-and-done head coach, but after a 2-7 start, many think that he can be on his way out. In his career, he has never lost more than 10 games in a season, but he’s trending to buck that trend.
Carroll was once one of the top football coaches in the country, but he’s 74 now. While he still has the energy of a much younger man, it’s fair to question if he’s the right guy to lead the Raiders through a likely rebuild.
This has led many fans and media pundits to suggest that Carroll should be fired after the season. The franchise hasn’t had a head coach last for at least two full seasons since Jon Gruden, so firing another head coach could be a recipe for disaster.
For his part, Carroll isn’t worried about his job security right now as he focuses on turning the Raiders around.
“No, I don’t think like that,” Carroll said when asked if he’s thinking about his job security. “I can’t go there. It’s been 20-something years with these last two opportunities coaching, and that hasn’t been in mind at all, so I’m not going to start now.”
Carroll Still Focused on Winning
With the Raiders’ season going downhill, it would make sense to start showcasing more young players and giving them a chance to get more experience. The team started to do that after the bye week, but they might want to embrace youth even further.
However, Carroll made it clear that his sole focus is on winning now, over developing players for the future.
“The next game is the biggest game we could possibly play,” Carroll said. “It’s a championship game, and whatever happened the week before has nothing to do with what’s going on now. And that’s the mentality that we’re trying to drive home, to find an uncommon consistency about the way we perform.”
That doesn’t mean the Raiders can’t develop and win, but it would make sense to bench some veterans in favor of young players.
Carroll Not Handling 2-7 Start Well
As noted earlier, Carroll is used to winning. In 14 seasons with the Seattle Seahawks, the team only posted a losing record three times, and one of those times, the team went to the playoffs.
The Raiders could still finish the season with a winning record, but that seems highly unlikely. Carroll is not used to losing, especially at this level. He admitted that he’s not processing it well.
“Not very well,” Carroll said when asked how he’s handling the 2-7 start to his Raiders tenure. “It’s been crappy. This is not what I expected to happen, and I didn’t feel that we’d be this far behind the start of the season. We’re just trying to keep driving the messages home and trying to get better each week and do some things that we can build from.”
The Raiders have done a lot of losing for a long time, so Carroll likely underestimated how difficult it would be to build a winning culture in Las Vegas.