Pete Carroll Simply Hasn't Been Able to Sell His Plan

Following a legend is definitely not for everybody.

For every Carl Yastrzemski you have ten Babe Dahlgrens. For every John Havlicek you have a hundred Hank Finkels. For every George Seifert you have a thousand Ray Handleys.

Pete Carroll is nothing if not courageous. He may not have succeeded in continuing the stunning, albeit all too brief legacy of Bill Parcells in New England. But Carroll will never be faulted for giving it the old college try.

Carroll came to the Patriots in 1997, shortly after Parcells stepped down in January after his team’s loss in Super Bowl XXXI. For all the rumors that abounded regarding Parcells’ imminent exodus to the Joisey Meadowlands, just as many had Carroll, then the defensive coordinator at San Francisco, coming to Foxborough to succeed Parcells. And that’s just how things turned out.

The hiring of Carroll was met with a mixed response, setting aside the bitter feelings of watching the greatest coach in Patriot history (and perhaps in the league today) just up and walk away right after a Super Bowl. Carroll had two distinct facets of his coaching past. One of them was pure myth, the other was a fear that eventually came true.

Given Carroll’s exposure to the 49ers’ style of play, and also given that Bob Kraft yearned to pattern the Patriots after the San Francisco organization, many experts reasoned that Carroll would bring the West Coast offense to Foxborough. The West Coast offense was a precision-timing operation, which seemed a good fit with Drew Bledsoe at the helm.

But this concept never materialized. Bledsoe didn’t want to be a West Coast quarterback, and the offense requires a mobile quarterback.

The other thing the Patriots had to think about when bringing Carroll on board was the fallout from his one previous coaching stint, with the Jets in 1994. His team started 6-5 (every Patriot team he coached was 6-5 at one point), but suffered a humiliating loss at home to Miami and went winless the rest of the way. Most people observed that the Jets quit on Carroll, and he was immediately dismissed.

Carroll supporters cried out that he wasn’t given a full and fair shot. This claim grew more credible when Carroll’s successor, Rich Kotite, failed miserably. It made the Jets look silly for giving up too quickly on Carroll, and that given enough time to fully implement his system, he would actually be a good coach.

There was one problem that hurt Carroll badly at the beginning of his Patriot career. Because the Patriots’ 1996 season ended so late due to their Super Bowl appearance, Carroll was set way back on finding good men to be his assistant coaches, especially on offense. Carroll set his defensive staff almost immediately, headed up by Steve Sidwell. But his search for an offensive coordinator lasted seemingly forever. With his sights set on Philadelphia offensive coordinator Jon Gruden (the Eagles refused permission for the Pats to talk to him since the move was lateral; today Gruden is the Raiders’ head coach), Carroll instead turned to former New Orleans offensive head Larry Kennan. Kennan hurriedly set his staff, and things were finally in place.

Carroll faced two stiff challenges from the outset. He had to deal with the fact that he was inheriting a Super Bowl team with high expectations. He also had to face endless and bothersome comparisons with his predecessor. Both of these challenges would help define Carroll’s tenure in New England, and both would work in conjunction to push Carroll to the brink of job termination today.

1996 changed the way New Englanders perceive the Patriots. This team is to the 1990s what the Celtics were to the 1980s and the Bruins to the 1970s. The Patriots are the hot team in the area. They are expected to compete for the AFC championship every year. It was squarely up to Carroll to mold and shape a team that would play for the Lombardi Trophy on an annual basis. The 1996 team started this tradition, and it was up to Carroll to perpetuate it.

To be fair to Carroll, calling the 1996 team a “Super Bowl team” is correct only because the record books say so. In reality, the Patriots made it to Super Bowl XXXI only because a foolish Denver Bronco team grossly underestimated the Jacksonville Jaguars and were upset at home in the divisional round. If Denver had won that game, they would have hosted New England instead of New England hosting Jacksonville for the AFC title game. And you’re in dreamland if you think the Patriots would have atoned for a 34-8 clubbing in Foxborough earlier that year.

But life in the NFL is not fair at all, least of all for a head coach. The Patriot fans wanted a Super Bowl team every year. Carroll was the man who had to do it.

And he had to do it while being compared to Parcells every step of the way. Carroll was the anti-Parcells, and the players loved it. Chris Slade signed a five-year deal soon after Carroll came on board, and is on record as saying he never would have stayed in New England had Parcells stayed. Free at last from the dominatrix head coach that Parcells was, the players smiled and looked forward to a more laid back approach and a more comfortable atmosphere around Foxborough.

What is even less fair is that Carroll will leave the Patriots as a coach whose players quit on him, yet Carroll will have the highest win percentage of any coach in team history. Parcells had two bad and two good years to finish at even .500. Raymond Berry’s pitiful offense in the late ’80s tarnished his otherwise great record. Chuck Fairbanks had bad years in 1973 and 1975. Carroll outshines these men, albeit only in three years.

But skeptics will say that because Carroll inherited a “Super Bowl team”, he was “supposed to win”. Given the injuries, the fallout of Parcells’ exit and the mere pressure of having to win with a “Super Bowl team”, it is a credit to Carroll that he did what he did.

But in each of Carroll’s three years, the team always established set patterns. They’d break out of the starting blocks fast, lose to the Jets in midseason and flounder, and recover just in time to eke into the playoffs. And as the Patriots ebbed and flowed, so did the fan approval for Carroll.

Complicating things early on was the offensive problems the team was having. Kennan was made the scapegoat after Carroll’s first year and was let go. Ernie Zampese was brought in to run the offense in 1998, and early enough so he could get a good firm handle on things. This was perceived as a coup for the Patriots, getting the architect of Air Coryell on board to design an offense built around Bledsoe.

Another problem Carroll faced in his first two years were lots of key injuries. Carroll was praised for still managing playoff berths in each of his two years despite crippling injuries to Terry Glenn, Curtis Martin, Ben Coates, Ted Johnson, Willie McGinest, and Bledsoe. But most fans thought Carroll was too soft on conditioning, and that these injuries were because he was too soft a coach. This is despite the fact that one of two coaching holdovers from the Parcells era was strength and conditioning coach Johnny Parker.

What eventually did Carroll in this year was that the same patterns remained despite a team that generally avoided all the key injuries of last year. Further complicating things was that there was no late playoff push this year, unlike the previous two years. This Patriot team never recovered from its midseason slump. This Patriot team is out of the playoff picture. The tumble-down from Super Bowl XXXI is complete.

Zampese has taken a lot of guff due to the failures of the offense, but in the big picture, the buck stops at the head coach’s desk. Naturally, it’s all Carroll’s fault.

Is it really?

Carroll’s main underlying problem is that he is a far better defensive coordinator than he is a head coach. He knows X’s and O’s as well as anyone, and can design defenses with the best of them. But he does not possess the ability to get players to play hard for him, and he lacks the personal qualities necessary to motivate players and to bend them to his will.

One key area was urgency. Carroll could never turn his players’ dials up. They always did it themselves, up until this year. A good coach always has his team ready to play every week. There would be some weeks where Carroll’s team simply wasn’t ready. That will always reflect on the coach.

The Philadelphia game this Sunday unfortunately bore all of this out. Needing an inspired effort, the Patriots came out and by and large went through the motions, mostly on offense. The Patriots have not cracked 20 points since the bye week, and given the weapons in the Patriot arsenal, that is both unacceptable and unbelievable. If the Patriot players will not put out for Carroll, and if the players fear no reprisal for such poor and uninspired play, he simply has to go.

It is a shame that Carroll’s coaching career has come to this. The deck was stacked against him from the start. If anyone in the NFL deserved to succeed, it was Carroll. He just didn’t. In effect, he was like Tebucky Jones, a man trying to learn a new job when in reality he’s only suited for the one he came from.

Agreeing to take over for Parcells in the situation that existed in 1997 is admirable in itself. Carroll came in with this “nice guy” image and took over for this blustering blowhard coaching genius before him, in front of a legion of fans who hated to see him defect to the Jets.

Many NFL players will admit, to a man, that they want their butts kicked by a hard-nosed coach. Carroll wouldn’t do that in his early years. When he tried to do that this year, it just didn’t sell. Once you’ve established that you’re nice, you can never change and pull it off.

And in the end, it came down to the fact that Carroll simply couldn’t sell the players on the big plan, whatever that was. Having an idea of how to run a football team and selling the idea to your players are two different things. Carroll had the plan, but lacked the proper skills to get his points across to his players.

Another problem that Carroll faced was trying to get his team to beat good teams, especially on the road. The Patriots would always whip tail on weak teams, but fold and cower against the “iron” of the NFL. Again, Carroll’s nice approach failed here, in that his team was never ready to play a Green Bay or an Atlanta or a Denver team, mentally or physically.

Now with the perception that much of the team has quit on Carroll, it is a shame to say that a change is definitely in order. The Patriots need a new coach.

Who that will be is up to Kraft, and good luck to him. Unless he can miraculously convince Joe Gibbs that auto racing is out and his new stadium is in, the best Kraft can do is get a mild upgrade. Maybe.

As for Carroll, he’ll latch on as someone’s defensive guru. He’s too good not to get such a job. But he’ll perhaps never be a head coach again. He simply doesn’t have the personal qualities to motivate men to work hard.

Patriot Nation can show a little bit of class and cheer for Carroll when he walks off the field at Foxborough Stadium for the last time. Cheer the man. The hell he has been through the past three years deserves your appreciation. Yes, he’ll be canned. But you all still need to send the man off in style.

And if you should ever have the chance to follow a legend, remember that there are far more out there who have failed versus those who have succeeded. Let the record show that Carroll tried, and tried well.

Part Three of Bob George’s “Transition At The Top” series will conclude tomorrow, with Ernie Zampese as the featured subject.

About Bob George

Covering Boston Sports since 1997. Native of Worcester, Mass. Attended UMass and Univ of Michigan. Lives in California. Just recently retired after 40 years of public school teaching. Podcasts on YouTube at @thepic4139

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