Pete Carroll is back ... in black: Former Seahawks leader to coach Las Vegas Raiders
Pete Carroll is back.
Back in black.
The 73-year-old former Seahawks Super Bowl-winning coach and the Raiders reached agreement Friday morning on a three-year contract to be Las Vegas’ new head man. That is according a report by ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
The deal has an option for Carroll to coach a fourth season for the Raiders, through 2028, Schefter reported. Carroll will be 77 years old at the end of the 2028 season.
When he takes the Raiders’ sideline this September, his birthday month, to coach his first game for Las Vegas, Carroll will become the oldest head coach in NFL history. Former Houston Texans interim coach Romeo Crennel was 73 years and 199 days old when he coached his final game at the end of the 2020 season.
Carroll is accepting the Raiders coaching job to work for principal owner Mark Davis — Carroll knew his late father and team patriarch Al Davis — and for Raiders part owner Tom Brady.
He replaces Antonio Pierce. Pierce was Las Vegas’ interim-turned-full-time head coach who went 4-13 in his only full season in charge, this past season. The Raiders finished last in the ultra-competitive AFC West. They lack a viable quarterback for 2025 and beyond.
Seahawks QBs and their old coach
Two of Carroll’s former Seahawks quarterbacks are or might be coming available, contract-wise. Russell Wilson’s one-year deal has ended with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Geno Smith’s contract with Seattle is scheduled to end following the 2025 season, though Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald has said this month he loves Smith as his QB and wants him to remain that.
Yet Smith reveres Carroll. The coach gave the 34-year-old quarterback the starting job four teams for seven consecutive years of one-year, minimum-salary contracts refused to give Smith in the NFL, until after Seattle traded Wilson to Denver before the 2022 season. Carroll is why Smith signed a $75 million extension with the Seahawks that ends after next season.
Smith said, months after the Seahawks fired Carroll, it was a “terrible moment.”
The Raiders will look at Smith’s situation with the Seahawks this offseason, Vic Tafur, Raiders beat writer for The Athletic, told The News Tribune on KJR-FM radio Friday. That would, for now, have to be in the form of exploring a trade with Seattle.
Carroll’s return into the AFC West means he will again be going against long-time rival Jim Harbaugh. Harbaugh is the coach of the Los Angeles Chargers. Carroll and Harbaugh have gone at it — and at times, at each other — as the coaches of the Seahawks and 49ers plus at USC versus Stanford over the last 20 years.
Carroll’s return comes 12 months after the Seahawks fired him and hired the 37-year-old Macdonald as a a first-time head coach to replace him. That was following Carroll’s 15 years running Seattle’s team through its most successful period in franchise history: 12 playoff appearances, two Super Bowls and the Seahawks’ only NFL championship, at the end of the 2013 season.
Carroll was out of football last season while the Seahawks paid him what was believed to be $15 million through the final year of his coaching contract. That was from the extension he signed with Seattle during the team’s 2020 season.
Pete Carroll: ‘Freakin’ jacked’
In his Seattle end, team chair Jody Allen and vice chair Bert Kolde chose general manager John Schneider’s path of an all-new coaching staff over Carroll’s route of running it back with his coaches following the Seahawks missing the playoffs for the second time in 12 years at the end of the 2023 season.
They missed the playoffs again this past season, despite finishing the 2024 season 10-7 under Macdonald.
“So that’s it for now. And I’m freakin’ jacked,” Carroll said the day the Seahawks fired him Jan. 10, 2024. “And I’m fired up. I’m not tired. I’m not worn down.
“I’m supposed to go lay on a cot somewhere. I ain’t feeling like that.”
He was asked that day what he was going to miss about coaching, what he had done every year but one since the Nixon Administration in 1973 when he became a graduate assistant at his alma mater, Pacific.
“The chance of being in one of those parades,” Carroll said. “The thrill of a lifetime was being in that (Super Bowl-winning) parade for our fans and people and all that (in February 2014 through downtown Seattle).”
“Who’s to say? I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I’m not sure yet. But that pursuit to the greatness of the moment that you celebrate with everybody, nothing like it. It’s worth fighting for.”
If the right opportunity to become a head coach comes along ...
“I have to wait and see.”
This story was originally published January 24, 2025 at 7:57 AM.
