How Raiders coach Pete Carroll, the NFL's Benjamin Button, is aging so gracefully

New York Times

2 days ago

Pete Carroll often pulls ideas from those around him.
During the 2023 season, the veteran Seattle Seahawks head coach was in a brainstorming session with defensive backs coach Karl Scott. They began discussing a defensive coverage one night, and their conversation spilled over to the next day.
The two met in Carroll's office before an early morning staff meeting. It was an intense back-and-forth that might have looked confrontational from the outside, but they were really just talking ball. Then, suddenly, as Scott laid out his perspective, Carroll broke the tension with a seemingly unprompted smirk.
Advertisement
Caught off guard, Scott pivoted from making his case to asking if he'd said something wrong to his boss.
'Nah, man. You're making that face, man,' Carroll said. 'That face I've just seen you make is the same face Kina makes.'
Kina is Scott's daughter, who was 5 at the time. To Scott, her mannerisms coming up during a game-planning debate symbolized Carroll's ability to balance his relentless competitiveness with his similarly persistent humanity.
'You're so used to locking in in the world of football and the world of sports,' Scott said recently, 'but in those two seconds, he was able to … be a regular person and have true emotion. That threw me off because it was so unique. … Even in the midst of all this (stress), he's Pete Carroll. He's himself.'
That consistency was one of the driving factors behind the Las Vegas Raiders' decision to hire Carroll this offseason and make him the oldest head coach in NFL history. His mind and body have undoubtedly changed as he approaches age 74, but his core approach remains the same.
Carroll won a national championship at USC and a Super Bowl with the Seahawks on the back of his famed 'always compete' mantra. That mentality comes with high standards for his assistants and players, but his style is far from militaristic.
Sometimes, there are impromptu H-O-R-S-E competitions on mini hoops in meeting rooms. Other times, he's showing defensive backs how to backpedal during individual drills. He might even randomly drop 'The People's Elbow' on an unsuspecting player during warmups. All of that is mixed into a singular focus on winning.
'It's truly a competition for everything we do, but we're having fun with it,' Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby said this spring. 'He just wants to see guys be the best versions of themselves. And he's true to that. It's not fake energy. It's every day. He's the same guy.'
Carroll has mastered the ability to connect with people. Whether it's a peer or someone decades his junior doesn't matter.
Advertisement
'Whether you're 21 or 71, there is one language that real ones speak — and that's competitiveness,' Washington Commanders coach and former Carroll assistant Dan Quinn said. 'There's the languages of love; there must be another one — and that one is competing.'
Ben Malcolmson played for Carroll at USC and later served as his assistant for over a decade with the Seahawks. He's seen Carroll build and reaffirm team culture repeatedly. Age hasn't changed his approach.
Early in his Seahawks tenure, Carroll buzzed around the building with the same energy level as a kid at recess. Malcolmson figured it was due to all the Mountain Dew he drank. Years later, Carroll switched his diet, cutting down on unhealthy foods, caffeine and sugar.
'I think he had more energy after that,' Malcolmson said recently.
It wasn't the Mountain Dew.
'He doesn't believe he's got to get old,' Malcolmson said. 'He's like Benjamin Button.'
With his resume, Carroll has likely already punched his ticket to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. No one would've blinked had he retired after parting ways with the Seahawks in 2023, but he knew he wasn't done yet. He had more to give, and the Raiders are giving him the opportunity to do just that.
'It's about competing and proving that you have value, you have worth,' Carroll said at his introductory news conference in January. 'I don't care how old you are. For anybody out there that's old and wants to know how you do it, you freaking battle every day, and you compete and you find your way to get better.'
Neiko Thorpe will never forget his introduction to Carroll and the Seahawks in September 2016. It began with a workout at the team facility, then a phone call from Carroll informing him he made the team — and that the Seahawks had arranged for a first-class flight back to Oakland, where Maegan, Thorpe's wife, had just given birth to their daughter, Nora. Thorpe, who had recently been cut by the Raiders and Indianapolis Colts, surprised Maegan in the hospital — flowers in hand — and met Nora, then returned to Seattle to begin his career as a Seahawk.
Advertisement
Thorpe knew the organization cared about him. He returned the favor by giving his all on the field for five seasons, leading the team in special teams tackles twice and becoming a three-time special teams captain.
'(It's) not just fourth-and-inches when they say this game is the little things,' said Thorpe, who joined Carroll's coaching staff in 2022 and was retained by current coach Mike Macdonald. 'It's the little things like that.'
Carroll's relationship-based approach takes many forms. He's demanding and sets a high standard, but his primary means of motivation is built around positive affirmations, not preying on fear of failure. He's known for playing young players early — something many coaches are hesitant to do — empowering them to play fast and freely instead of coaching them to avoid mistakes. And it works: The 2013 Seahawks had the youngest 53-man roster ever to win a Super Bowl. The approach is a big reason so many played the best ball of their careers in Seattle, and several assistants found success elsewhere.
'He makes people better,' Quinn said. 'And I don't care if that's at (age) 32, 42, 52, 72. That's a trait — and not everybody has it.'
To do so, Carroll must know them as people, not just football commodities. Learning their stories, no matter how bumpy the road, is a key part of the process. In Seattle, he was drawn to players with chips on their shoulders.
This partly explains Carroll's success with late-round draft picks like Kam Chancellor and Richard Sherman; undrafted players like Doug Baldwin and Jermaine Kearse; others in search of a second act like Marshawn Lynch, Brandon Browner, Quandre Diggs and Geno Smith; and some with a history of off-field issues like Bruce Irvin.
Carroll saw what they had been through, where they'd been and how it informed who they could become.
'Coach Carroll is extremely relatable,' said Smith, one of Carroll's all-time favorite players, who joined him with the Raiders this offseason. 'He understands that guys have got to be themselves in order to be their best selves.'
"He helped me change the way I spoke to myself."
Geno Smith's relationship with Pete Carroll is special.@Raiders (via @NFLFilms)pic.twitter.com/YUy3vSOFvn
— NFL (@NFL) March 8, 2025
You can be a soft-spoken special-teamer, a loud-mouthed defensive back, a rah-rah speech giver or a lead-by-example type. Just be you, Carroll insists, and that's more than enough.
'It's more than just doing work and getting practice done, getting games, getting wins,' Malcolmson said. 'It's like, 'No, this is a relationship,' and that is on display with how he can connect with people.'
Advertisement
Carroll's 50-plus years of coaching have shown him that, independent of age or background, players and coaches want the same thing: genuine, caring leadership. He has a reputation for delivering, through good times and bad. He has won and lost championships at the college and pro levels and navigated all that comes with those successes and failures. Carroll has learned to remain unwavering in his messaging and his commitment to the people following his lead.
'The essence of it is figuring out who you are and what you want to stand for, and how you are going to deal with people,' Carroll said. 'And it has to come from your heart. It has to be right, as authentic as it can possibly be.'
Carroll was once a failure in this profession. After four years as the New York Jets' defensive coordinator, he was hired as the team's head coach in 1994. He was fired after just one season, a 6-10 campaign.
He landed a second chance with the New England Patriots in 1997, and the team made the playoffs in his first two seasons. Following an 8-8 season with no playoff berth, though, Carroll was fired again. He spent the 2000 season out of coaching, but he wasn't idle.
'That was the year that, really, my life in football changed,' Carroll said. 'I really didn't know that I wanted to be a head coach — it just kind of happened, honestly. And I wasn't prepared well enough. I didn't have my philosophy together. …
'It was pretty dang significant. And it was (about) figuring out who I am, figuring out what my uncompromising principles are all about, figuring out how I wanted to treat the people and how I envisioned the organization coming together in all aspects.'
After a year getting his act together, Carroll landed the USC job. Although he's hailed now as a program legend, his hire was initially met with apathy.
Advertisement
'They were yelling at me for coming in there. They didn't want me,' Carroll said. 'I was getting a terrible response, but I took it on as, 'I couldn't care less,' because I knew where we were going and what we wanted to do. And because I figured out how I wanted to do it.'
Carroll's historic nine-year run at USC never would have happened if he hadn't realized he needed to adapt. His son, Brennan Carroll, who's now the Raiders' offensive line coach, was on staff at USC and saw his growth firsthand.
'He's very open-minded. He isn't set in his ways in any aspect except with the fundamentals,' Brennan said recently. 'As times have changed, he's always tried to stay aware.'
Pete aimed to stay on top of everything at USC, from offensive and defensive trends to popular music and the advent of social media.
'He loves surrounding himself with people who are on the tip of the spear,' Malcolmson said. 'That speaks to who he is. He's always looking for that next little edge, and he's willing to trust the people that he's put around him to help get a little bit better each time.'
Carroll has replicated that process with the Raiders this offseason.
'Music or entertainment or sports or politics — he stays on top of everything,' quarterbacks coach Greg Olson said. 'He's a very well-read man. He can carry a conversation with a 10-year-old or a 95-year-old. He can relate to the rich, poor, White, Black, young or old; he does it all.
'I think you have to be in tune with what's going on in society, really, if you want to have that kind of impact on people. He's incredible at it.'
The Raiders have been the epitome of instability. Carroll is their 15th head coach since 2000 (including interim coaches; 16th if you count Jon Gruden's separate stints). Crosby has played for the franchise since 2019 and is already on his fifth head coach.
Advertisement
It'd be understandable if Crosby were hesitant to buy into another culture change, but that hasn't been the case.
'Pete creates that culture, that energy,' Crosby said. 'Everyone knows it's hard — you're going to work your ass off, you're going to put in all the work — but you've got a whole organization of people that've all got to be on the same wavelength and go in the same direction. … I think Pete does an incredible job with that.'
As much work as Carroll does to remain young, Father Time is undefeated. To create a lasting legacy with the Raiders, he will have to work quickly. And if you ask him, there's no doubt that's going to happen.
'We're trying to take this as far as you can possibly take it,' Carroll said. 'I can't think any way else.'
(Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; photos: Patrick Smith, Kevork Djansezian, Robin Alam, Ethan Miller, Jane Gershovich, Andy Lyons / Getty Images)