Since being hired by the Raiders in January, head coach Pete Carroll hasn’t had many bad days in the press.
Maybe not any.
Quite literally, there hasn’t been a negative report on Carroll since the day he arrived in Las Vegas.
By all accounts, Carroll’s infectious personality is already making an impact on the locker room and a former player of Carroll’s talked last week about what makes the Raiders’ 73-year-old head coach so unique.
Former running back Robert Turbin played for Carroll in Seattle from 2012 to 2015 and again for a short time in 2019. He shared with flagship radio host Q Myers on Thursday what separates Carroll from many of his peers in the coaching ranks.
“He’s a winner. He’s a guy that’s been around winning a long time at all levels, and you know, he understands what it takes to win, and he understands that having this positive energy and this positive vibe has been, you know, these positive reinforcements. You know, when guys are making mistakes and you’re trying to develop young players into being great, you know, that’s the mindset that you got to have,” Turbin said on Raider Nation Radio’s Unnecessary Roughness.
“So that’s who he is. I can truly say, four years under Pete Carroll, I’ve literally never seen him have a bad day,” Turbin continued. “Maybe one time I saw maybe under the weather, you know, where his voice was maybe a little lost. But this is truly who he is, and when you hear a guy like Jacobi Meyers in his presser… talk [about] how everything is just positive, that’s just no surprise, because that’s what Pete Carroll is all about.”
As many are already aware, Carroll still teaches a college course at the University of Southern California and NFL Network’s Rich Eisen shared a story last month about a class of Carroll’s he recently attended.
Eisen raved about the class and described it as something like he has never seen.
“I’m telling you… [the kids] were all giving testimonials to Pete, who probably doesn’t want this to be said about him, that he has changed their lives,” Eisen said. “And I know we’re talking on Raider Nation Radio in Las Vegas, Nevada. I sat there and thought to myself, if the Raiders are buying what Pete is selling like these kids in class…”
“Here is a man we’re talking about how old he is. I can tell you he related to a group of 20, 21, 22-year-olds like nobody else. He was a peer of theirs, and they of his, because he was talking about how they have helped him learn more about his mantra… They were a connected body. I can’t recall the last time I was in room where there was over 100 people, and we were all connected,” Eisen continued.
For the first time in a long time, Eisen said the Raiders have someone to lead the organization.
“You know, Maxx Crosby is just playing for one guy after another after another. He’s looking for a north star. All the other Raiders who have been there through the churning and have been looking for somebody to sell them something worth buying and they know it’s going to last and if you want a culture changer, which the Raiders were in desperate need of, I saw it.”
x: @raidersbeat