As the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs prepare for the Super Bowl, Pete Carroll is formulating his plan to push the Raiders into that stratosphere.
He’s not interested in any long-range process, either.
“We don’t have some time that we’ve got to make it five, six years down the road,” Carroll said. “That’s not what we’re thinking. We’ve got to start right now to go after it and build this team as quickly as we can.”
His history suggests it might not take as long as some might think, no matter how bad it looks for the Raiders.
USC was close to rock bottom when Carroll took over the Trojans in 2001. The job appeared so daunting that a handful of coaches rejected USC’s overtures, including Oregon State’s Dennis Erickson, Oregon’s Mike Bellotti and the San Diego Chargers’ Mike Riley.
Within three years of arriving in Los Angeles, the Trojans were national champions.
The Seattle Seahawks were coming off 4-12 and 5-11 seasons when Carroll made the move to the NFL in 2010. They reached the playoffs in his third season in 2012, were Super Bowl champions in his fourth and played in the Super Bowl again in his fifth.
Here’s a look at each game:
Super Bowl 48
Opponent: Denver Broncos
Site: MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey
Score: Seahawks 43 Broncos 8
The Seahawks were actually the underdog against Peyton Manning and the Broncos on a frigid but manageable winter night in New Jersey.
It made sense, of course. Manning was an inevitable future Hall of Famer overseeing a Broncos offense that averaged a league-high 37.9 points.
The Seahawks were quarterbacked by Russell Wilson, whom Carroll surprisingly plucked from Wisconsin in the third round of the 2012 draft. No chance an undersized second-year quarterback was going to topple Manning.
What unfolded was as convincing as it was shocking. The Seahawks whacked the Broncos in every conceivable way.
In doing so, they set a Super Bowl record for margin of victory for an underdog and tied for the largest point differential.
It’s the Seahawks’ only Super Bowl championship and completed a warp-speed turnaround under Carroll. Four years after leaving USC, where he had built a college football powerhouse, Carroll had delivered football’s ultimate achievement to Seattle.
“We’re not sleeping tonight,” Carroll told reporters afterward. “We’re staying up all night because this party’s gonna get started as soon as you guys let me go.”
Defense always has been Carroll’s forte, and the Legion of Boom group he built was spectacular from the start. They attacked from every angle and forced two interceptions, making Manning and the Broncos look slow and out of place.
It could not have started any better for the Seahawks, who led 2-0 12 seconds into the game when Broncos center Manny Ramirez snapped the ball over Manning’s head and running back Knowshon Moreno fell on it in the end zone for a safety.
Wilson was efficient while outplaying Manning, finishing with 206 yards passing, two touchdowns and no interceptions with a 123.1 passer rating.
Super Bowl 49
Opponent: New England Patriots
Site: University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale, Arizona
Score: Patriots 28, Seahawks 24
The young and talented Seahawks were back on pro football’s biggest stage one year after their beatdown of the Broncos.
Wilson and the Legion of Boom looked at Tom Brady and the Patriots as peers rather than royalty as they attempted to join an elite group of teams that had won back-to-back Super Bowls.
Then came one of the most shocking finishes in Super Bowl history.
With less than 30 seconds left and trailing 28-24, the Seahawks were 1 yard from repeating as champions. But rather than giving the ball to punishing running back Marshawn Lynch, they decided to throw.
The play will live in football infamy.
Wilson’s second-down throw to the edge of the goal line was intercepted by cornerback Malcolm Butler with 20 seconds left, sealing the Patriots’ come-from-behind victory to the shock of most everyone in the stadium.
Carroll accepted the blame, telling reporters he told offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell to throw the ball rather than hand it to Lynch.
“My fault, totally,” Carroll said. “There’s nobody to blame but me, and I told our players that. I hate that we have to live with that because we did everything right to win the football game.”
The Seahawks had scored 17 straight points to take a 24-14 lead. But Brady threw two fourth-quarter touchdowns, the second with 2:02 left, to give the Patriots a 28-24 lead.
Seattle then reached the Patriots’ 5-yard line when Wilson heaved a 44-yard throw that Jermaine Kearse miraculously held onto while falling to the ground.
Lynch then ran for 4 yards, giving him 102 for the game.
He needed 1 more, but never got the chance.
Contact Vincent Bonsignore at [email protected]. Follow @VinnyBonsignore on X.
