But Pete Carroll, in his return to the league after a year off as the new head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, apparently didn’t see things that way.

It just so happened that my flight from Seattle to Indianapolis was also Carroll’s flight, which I didn’t know until I found myself standing beside him as the plane was about to board. Having known him through his entire time with the Seattle Seahawks from 2010-2023, I casually mentioned that it was nice to see him again (I hadn’t seen him in over a year), and that it was nice to see him back in the NFL

He responded, “Yeah, I’m back” with a sly smile, and then said, “There’s a lot to do.”

I took that to mean that the 73-year-old Carroll, who needs no additional fluff on his resume, simply loved coaching too much to be without it. The 2024 season marked the second “gap year” in Carroll’s career. There was 2000, after he was fired by the New England Patriots (replaced by some guy named Bill Belichick), and before his wildly successful stint with USC from 2001-09. In that first gap year, Carroll wrote for NFL.com, and went back to his John Wooden books to try and figure himself out, so he would no longer be the coach who seemed like a bad fit at the professional level.

By the time he returned to the league in 2010, Carroll’s philosophies were well enough aligned with his coaching style that he was able to turn around a Seahawks team that had been left with virtually no talent on the roster by previous general manager Tim Ruskell. Carroll and new GM John Schneider (who was sitting in first class on this same Monday morning flight) flipped that roster, brought the Seahawks their first Super Bowl win at the end of the 2013 season, and assembled one of the greatest defenses in NFL history – the Legion of Boom, which led the league in points allowed every season from 2012-15. That’s an incomprehensible feat in today’s league.

Things never quite held to that level after the Seahawks lost Super Bowl XLIX at the end of the 2014 season with the Russell Wilson interception nobody in the Emerald City will ever forget (or forgive), and Carroll was sent packing following the 2023 campaign.

Now, Carroll was back in the saddle, and he had no time for the accoutrements one would expect for a coach who will probably wind up in both the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame. On this flight, Carrol boarded in the same coach group I did.

One of the most prominent and successful coaches of his era sat in an exit row for the flight. This trip, and Carroll’s new gig with the Raiders, wasn’t and isn’t about anything but ball, and fixing another team as he fixed the USC Trojans and Seattle Seahawks. This was made abundantly clear by the circumstances of the combine trip, and more so during Carroll’s Tuesday afternoon combine presser – which, true to form, ran over a good 10 minutes as Carroll tried to take every question thrown at him.

The aforementioned second gap year for Carroll was spent in some interesting ways.

“This was a really unique season for me, obviously,” he said. ”It wound up being full of grandkids and games. I saw more football games this year than you can imagine. All the high school games, JV, varsity, UW [University of Washington] games, and then of course everybody that’s playing all over the league and watching all those games.

“So, it was really a fun offseason, in a sense, that kind of just extended. But it was really rewarding, too, because you have an opportunity to look at a whole different vantage point. And in that, I saw things differently than I’ve seen them in a long time.

“So, I’m hoping to take advantage of that. I’m really excited about getting going again.”

Even at 73, Carroll runs around like a guy half his age, and that’s still true as he gets ready to try and create a new winning culture for the Raiders as he did for other teams throughout his career. Hopefully for the Raiders, all that stuff Carroll learned last year about what he already knew will pay off.

There’s patterns to the game that I saw differently. There’s patterns to down and distance situations. Whether you’re playing JV football or you’re playing for the Super Bowl. You can see that occur in games more clearly. Really, a lot of it was the analytic outlook of it. But it was kind of like… Things kind of slowed down a little bit watching it this time around. When you’re in the midst of all of these seasons and every week 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.

“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 differently. I could feel the rhythms of the game differently. I’m really excited to convey those things that we’re looking at differently than I have before. I have a really strong philosophy about how we do things and why we do what we do. But yet, if you’re competing then you have to be dynamic enough to continue to grow and expand.

“I’m really interested to see how that plays out.”

Seahawks general manager John Schneider, who started the Seattle resurgence with Carroll back in 2010, also spoke at the combine on Tuesday, and I asked Schneider what the Raiders are in for regarding Carroll’s ability to naturally affect an organization with that winning culture. Because it’s not an easy thing to do in any way, and Carroll’s methods have always been his own.

“Competing in every aspect of building a football team every day,” Schneider said. “And his ability to instill confidence in people is second to none. And the energy. I mean, it’s going to be, it’s a culture shift. I’m not exactly sure what it was in the past, but I know what’s coming in.

“We did a lot of awesome stuff together, you know. And I think, you know, those two years, starting out 7-9, there was a lot of things we had to work through. And we overcame it. We sustained it. That’s like – his positive approach is amazing. I always tell people I think that his best coaching job was the year we lost, the year after we lost the Super Bowl. He was unbelievably good.”

Clearly, Carroll believes that he’s still unbelievably good, or he wouldn’t take this challenge on. He has general manager John Spytek on board, and a certain franchise advisor by the name of Tom Brady. So far, Carroll sees the potentially winning parallels to the past.

“The time I’ve had with John, it really connects with Tom as well, because Tom and John are very well-connected,” Carroll said. “To feel the continuity of our competitiveness, and our approach now, and how we want to picture this thing coming together, it’s just as solid as it could possibly be. I couldn’t be more fired up about it, because when Tom talks, and when Jon talks, and when I talk, we’re talking the same language. It’s been a seamless start to this thing.

“I didn’t know that until we started hanging out. The relationship between the head coach and the general manager, to me, is the most important relationship in the NFL.”

So, he’s got that going for him, which is nice.

We’ve put together a group of guys that are really fricking jacked to do something special,” Carroll continued. “It’s so heartwarming to me that we’re on the same page, and we’re going for it. You’ll see in the efforts that we’re making to put this team together that we’re not holding back.

“There’s no timeline that we’re going to try to do something good somewhere down the road so we can feel okay about ourselves. We’re going for it. It’s exactly the way I wanted to do it and hoped that I would have partners in doing so.

“These guys are really big-time. Hopefully, you’ll see, it’ll be obvious, but right now there’s a great feeling about where we’re trying to go, and togetherness that we’re feeling about that.”

If you heard Carroll speak in Los Angeles or Seattle back in the day, you are unquestionably familiar with his particular 30,000-foot view (coach is just fine in this 30,000-foot view), and how important it is for him to be “frickin’ jacked” at all times.

Pete Carroll has learned through trial and error to be the version of himself he’s most comfortable with, and it’s a version that has proven to provide winning results. Whether that happens with his next stop or not, there’s no question that he’ll do it his own way – whether he’s flying, coaching, or creating a culture.