EAST RUTHERFORD: Twenty years after he started out coaching in the National Football League, Pete Carroll (pictured), finally climbed the top of the mountain when the Seattle Seahawks won yesterday’s Super Bowl. At the age of 62, after being hired and fired by a handful of teams, he got his hands on the Vince Lombardi Trophy when the Seahawks trounced the Denver Broncos 43-8 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
Typically, he played down his role, giving praise instead to his young and energetic team for perfectly executing their game plan. “It’s a big deal. It was a big game for us and we played great. We played the way we wanted to play,” he said. “The team was totally focused on getting this done and it played out the way we wanted it to play. “All phases contributed. It was not really even a question in their mind that we wouldn’t perform like this. We didn’t ask them to do things that we don’t always do and they trusted in that.”
With his unbridled enthusiasm, high-octane energy and unusual motivational techniques, Carroll has always been a new-age coach ahead of his time.
The league’s second oldest head coach, he blares music during practice, encourages competitive basketball and bowling between the players, and gallops down sidelines during games to follow the action.
After losing the head coaching job at the New England Patriots and New York Jets, Carroll left the NFL for a decade and coached successfully in college football until he was lured back by the Seahawks. In his four seasons in Seattle he has rebuilt the team, recruiting a bunch of younger players and turning them into the best defensive unit in the NFL.Reuters
