Pete Carroll
My latest column for Bostonsportsreview.com. Click on the link to check out the rest of the site's content.
In retrospect, Carroll got raw deal
By Dave Doyle
Contributing columnist
If Pete Carroll heard what happened with Manny Ramirez a couple weeks ago, one can only imagine he shook his head and laughed.
The former Patriots coach, who now lords over a potential college football empire the likes of which hasn't been seen in decades out at the University of Southern California, knows what Ramirez went through.
The Red Sox slugger was almost nearly figuratively run out of town by an angry mob at the trade deadline, despite being on pace for the fourth-most prolific RBI season in major league history.
Carroll's situation as coach of the Patriots was different, but there are strong similarities in the way their plights played out. A wave of populist anger, fueled by talk radio and knee-jerk reporting, helped turn the tide against Carroll in Boston.
Such howls of protest have a been recurring theme in Boston over the past decade. Roger Clemens' acrimonious exit was a prime example. Clemens' departure to Toronto was the first recent example of how a couple of well-placed writers, combined with froth of sports radio, can be used to vilify someone who left their heart and soul out on the playing field. The main issue in negotiations was the Rocket's ego clash with then-Sox general manager Dan Duquette. Most of Boston sided with Duquette. Clemens' sub-2 ERA in Houston this year en route to what will likely be another Cy Young Award, at the age of 43, is all you need to know about how that one turned out.
The way Clemens tarred and feathered on the way out of town was pretty bad, but Carroll got it worse than any sports personality in Boston in recent years.
Start with one premise: The Patriots of the mid-1990s were not as good as we remember them.
Consider Bill Parcells' tenure. 1993? 5-11. OK, they were terrible for years prior. Give him a pass. 1994? Started 3-6, then caught fire and made the playoffs. 1995? In theory, should have been an improvement on 1994. Instead, the Pats went 6-10.
The 1996 Patriots went on to win the AFC title. But that accomplishment required perfect synergy, as Jacksonville pulled off one of the biggest playoff upsets of our lifetime to knock off Denver and give New England a home game in the AFC title game. That Denver team was the same one that went on to win the following two Super Bowls.
So the Patriots got a Super Bowl berth because the stars aligned properly, then Parcells left town. Carroll came aboard as a laid-back contrast to Parcells' eat-nails-for-breakfast demeanor. The New England region, suffering through a lousy spell for just about all its sports teams, got its hopes lifted by a Super Bowl appearance, and forgot that the AFC champs were just a year removed from 6-10. Were they a potential annual playoff team? Yes. A perennial legitimate Super Bowl contender? Not back then.
Meanwhile, as coach, Carroll was subjected to the same conditions that played a big role in running Parcells out of town -- he couldn't do the grocery shopping. During Carroll's tenure, chief grocery shopper Bobby Grier made one terrible move after another -- letting Curtis Martin walk, wasting draft picks on the likes of Chris Canty, and so on. Carroll could only play the cards he was dealt.
And what did Carroll do with those cards? The first year, they lost in the playoffs to Pittsburgh by a point, 7-6, in a classic defensive struggle. It wasn't Carroll who fumbled at the end, it was Drew Bledsoe who made the gaffe that cost the Pats a chance at a potential return trip to the AFC title game.
The following year? No more Martin in the lineup, Bledsoe broke his finger, and they still got into the playoffs with Scott Zolak at the helm. Third year? OK, things fell apart at the end and the Patriots finished 8-8, but by that point, Grier and company had done a thorough job gutting the team's depth.
But because Carroll was the public face of a team with over-inflated expectations and came across with California cool instead of East Coast intensity, he was all but run out of town and was turned into the butt of jokes. This happened despite having a better record than Parcells (Carroll was 28-23 including playoffs; Parcells 34-34) and despite the fact that to this day, he's the only coach in Patriots history who never had a losing season.
Now, obviously things have worked out for the best -- you'd have to be an idiot to complain about the Patriots under Belichick, and Carroll is overseeing a Trojans team whose second-teamers would finish second in the Pac-10 behind the starters. But the fact remains no sports figure got treated more unfairly in the court of public opinion in the city of Boston in this generation than Pete Carroll.
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