How Carroll's Time Away Prepared Him for Raiders HC Position

New Las Vegas Raiders head coach Pete Carroll has returned to football after stepping down as the Seattle Seahawks head coach following the 2022-23 season. His brief time away from the National Football League lit a fire under him.

Carroll clarified at the NFL Combine that he did not retire because he wanted to return to coaching one day. "I didn't retire, and I did that purposely. I wasn't ready to stop coaching," Carroll said of his year away from coaching professionally.

Carroll noted that the rigors of an NFL season make it difficult for coaches to see things clearly, but he is now refreshed and ready to go. His time away allowed him to see things from a different perspective. He believes stepping away slowed things down for him mentally.

"Yeah, there's patterns to the game that I saw differently, and there's patterns to down and distance in situations that, whether you're playing JV football or you're playing for the Super Bowl, that you can see that occur in games that I see more clearly. Really, a lot of it was kind of the analytic outlook of it, but it was kind of like things kind of slowed down a little bit watching it this time around," Carroll said.

"When you're in the midst of all of these seasons and every week, as you're just so frantically going about planning for the next game, you don't get the chance to have that perspective and slow your mind down and really take a clear visual look at it. And it was a real highlight. I knew it was happening; it wasn’t like it happened, and I thought about it afterward. I could tell it was happening. I could tell I could see it differently."

Carroll elaborated on the value of his time watching football from a different point of view than that of a head coach. This could prove valuable to the Raiders as they look to move past a forgettable past season.

"I could feel the rhythms of the game differently. And I'm really excited to convey those things that we take look at differently than I have before. So I have a really strong philosophy about how we do things and why we do what we do," Carroll said. "But yet, if you're competing, then you have to be dynamic enough to continue to grow and expand and all of that. So, I'm really anxious to see how that plays in."

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