Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll is 72, the oldest coach in the NFL, with a Super Bowl trophy and the Seventeenth-most wins (165) in NFL historical past. His team meetings are additionally a bit … unorthodox.
Jermaine Kearse (extensive receiver): Honestly, the team meetings have been a sh– ton of enjoyable.
Malcolm Smith (linebacker): His team meetings are actually what I believe units him aside from different coaches.
Chad Brown (former NFL linebacker and training intern): Absolutely, with out a doubt, the perfect team meetings of any team I used to be on as a coach or a participant.
Luke Willson (tight finish): I get drafted and are available right here for rookie minicamp with no concept what to anticipate. It’s lifeless silent in the team assembly room. There are a bunch of rookies who don’t even have free-agent contracts, a couple drafted guys and a couple of undrafted free brokers. He just storms in the room and goes: “Alright, alright, let’s get this thing started right.” He’s like, “OK, kickers, get up! Who are the kickers here?” We had a couple kickers, and he has them do a basketball shootout, and he goes, “Whoever wins gets to stay; whoever doesn’t gets cut.” He’s completely kidding and I’m just laughing. The subsequent factor we all know, we’re capturing basketballs, he’s bought a couple of YouTube movies and we exit to observe and music is blaring the entire time and he’s dancing round.
Ben Malcolmson (Carroll’s chief of workers): Barnum and Bailey’s three-ring circus right here.
Willson: I used to be like, “Dude … this guy is kind of crazy.”
Justin Britt (middle): He would do what he referred to as “the safe place.” Everyone had a bullsh– story about them and none of it was true, however should you didn’t know, it appeared plausible.
Uchenna Nwosu (exterior linebacker): He tells all these tales different guys went by … promoting the hell out that story, making it sound actually good and plausible.
Britt: He had individuals imagine that my mother had this anger in direction of me and resented me as a result of of how massive my head was at start. I needed to play together with that for like 4 years.
Golden Tate (extensive receiver): One team assembly he will get up there and says: “Hey, we’ve got this new Gatorade. Why don’t you guys make sure you try one out before practice? They’re supposed to hydrate you really well. We don’t want you out here pulling anything.”
Shaquem Griffin (linebacker): Pete Carroll is just in a land of his personal.
Tate: We would open up the cooler and this faux snake would come out. We’d all leap and a few of us would scream. He had a digicam in there. Of course, the following day in the team assembly, he chosen all the nice ones and premiered it to your complete team.
Britt: He would have a set quantity of time in the day allotted to just having pure enjoyable.
Malcolmson: He hosted scooter races in the coaches’ places of work. There was a loop that he arrange, and he would do timed scooter races.
Brown: I used to be excited every single day to go to work as a result of, what is Pete going to do as we speak? What enjoyable factor is going to occur?
QB Pete coming quickly to Quarterback on @netflix 📺 pic.twitter.com/CEskVNUtLr
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Britt: By the time we bought to the intense stuff, we have been all like: “I’m awake, I’m ready, my senses are right. Let’s go.”
Brown: I’ve by no means been in a soccer setting like that.
Tate: He was a jokester. He was a critical jokester.
Malcolmson: Pete instructed our video crew: “Hey, if anyone trips (at practice) during a drill or a route, if they fall down, you’ve got to edit it and slice it with sniper footage.”
Kearse: Everybody can be speaking, after which the lights would just go down low.
Malcolmson: It would lower to dramatic music and a sniper scene in a film.
Ok.J. Wright (linebacker): Like “American Sniper” or one thing. It can be like: “I have an eye on him. I’m locked on the target.”
Malcolmson: It’s like a minute-long buildup, and everybody is like: “Oh no, who’s gonna get got?”
Wright: And then the sniper would shoot, the man would fall at observe and blood would splash out. It was the funniest sh– ever.
The NFL’s oldest coach doesn’t all the time act prefer it. (Christopher Mast / Getty Images)
Nick Bellore (fullback:) He had a surgical procedure on his leg or his knee. He got here again to the team assembly proper after he bought it finished.
Tyler Mabry (tight finish): He’s driving on the golf cart at observe, after which I don’t know if he had a cane, however he’s strolling, then he threw it down and began operating.
Bellore: He just got here sprinting in such as you’d see a skilled wrestler going into the ring.
Mabry: Like this man just bought saved by Jesus.
Bellore: He sprinted down after which went and adjusted course, and everybody was going nuts and he ran a professional agility (take a look at). It was actually like he was doing a mix exercise. I’ve by no means laughed that arduous in a assembly.
Britt: Every new participant that comes there goes: “Don’t go somewhere else. This is the best place.” And it really was.
Malcolmson: For the New York Super Bowl, that was the primary 12 months our free-throw capturing contest actually took off. We began to do it throughout nearly each team assembly, and there was an in-season event. It actually grew to become half of the tradition.
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Kearse: We had a entire NCAA-style bracket with protection on one aspect and offense on the opposite aspect.
Malcolmson: That was Pete’s request after we went out to New York for the week earlier than the Super Bowl: “Make sure there is a basketball hoop.” We landed on a Sunday evening the week earlier than the Super Bowl. By the time we bought to the resort, it was most likely 9 or 10 at evening. I used to be like, “I’ve got to go figure out this basketball hoop because we have a team meeting first thing in the morning at the Giants’ facility.”
Brown: There was all the time a real team-building goal with all the things.
Malcolmson: I borrowed a automotive, went to Walmart in a suburban New Jersey city, bought a full-scale basketball hoop, one of these ones the place you pour sand or water in the bottom, then drove to the Giants’ facility. By this level, it’s most likely midnight, and I ended up ending constructing the ring at 3 a.m.
Chris Carlisle (energy coach): Tom Coughlin was the coach on the time, and all of the Giants individuals have been like: “What are you doing? No, you can’t bring that in. This is a meeting room. This is like church.”
Willson: I used to be nervous. I’m a rookie. We’re eight days out from the f—ing Super Bowl. Pete comes in, wheels in a f—ing basketball objective and is like: “I don’t give a sh– that it’s the Super Bowl, we’re doing the same thing we’ve always done, boys. In fact, we’re going to have an All-Star tournament with the best shooters of the year, and we’re doing Round 1 today.
Malcolmson: Just one of those crazy Pete things.
Willson: All the stress, everything — it just disappeared. It was like: “Alright, f— it, who gives a sh–? We’re in New York. It’s the same thing as home.”
Malcolmson: One camp, we did full introductions earlier than the basketball shoot-off. Tyler Lockett got here out in the darkish to the Chicago Bulls’ intro music, with lasers and a fog machine in the team assembly room. We had a confetti machine and a trophy presentation. It was so dumb however so enjoyable.
Kearse: Yeah, it was enjoyable, however subliminally it was constructing a aggressive edge. Even the rebounders took it critical.
Smith: That program has persistently been aggressive as a result of he is aware of the way to get probably the most out of his gamers from an emotional standpoint.
DeeJay Dallas (operating again): The night-before meetings are his favourite…
Malcolmson: He would need the worst convention room on the resort on Saturday evening. We had about 100 individuals, and he would attempt to discover the dingiest, smallest room on the resort.
Bellore: There’s actually no room for any further particular person. That’s distinctive to right here.
Malcolmson: Every time the resort can be like: “We have this nice big ballroom.” And each time he’d be like: “No, no, I want this side conference room.”
Smith: He pays a lot consideration to the power of rooms.
Carlisle: On the street, he’d come right down to the load room and go: “I just need to be around the players. I need to get that energy. I need to feel the team again.”
Bellore: He’s proper there, and we’re all in there collectively.
Dallas: He got here in there, shirt unbuttoned, he was already fired up. He will get to speaking, and he threw a chair — increase, it hit the wall. The chair is caught in the wall. I used to be like, “Goddamn! He fired up.”
Artie Burns (cornerback): For a man like that to have that a lot power, it makes you wish to play for him.
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Dallas: He’s like, “F— it, we’re already fired up, we don’t need no meeting!” And we bought out of our assembly.
Jordyn Brooks (linebacker): It will get fairly wild generally.
Phil Haynes (offensive lineman): We all the time get actually hype earlier than a particular groups assembly, however he bought actually, actually excited and jumped by a whiteboard.
DeShawn Shead (former cornerback, present DBs coach): Out of nowhere he bought up — increase.
Wright: He actually does a full-on cartwheel into it.
Riq Woolen (cornerback): But the whiteboard flipped over, and he flipped over with it.
Haynes: I used to be like, “My God.” We all checked to verify he was OK, then we began cheering.
Woolen: Good ol’ Pete bought proper up, and he was like, “That was nothing.”
Malcolmson: The humorous factor is, the whiteboard didn’t actually serve any goal. But it was all the time in the identical spot I believe as a prop for each time Pete determined to go deal with it.
Carroll ranks fourth in wins amongst lively coaches, two behind the Steelers’ Mike Tomlin. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA Today)
Julian Love (security): I bought referred to as on (lately). It was cool. His message for that (assembly) was, “I’m not out there by myself. I don’t have to win the game for us. I don’t have to do anything that’s out of my control. Everyone has my back to get this done.” I felt that the following day. After the sport, he stated it once more like, “J Love, I told you we had your back.”
Jason Peters (offensive line): He offers you himself. He’s talking from the guts. That’s totally different from anyplace else I’ve been.
Drew Lock (quarterback): The manner he tells tales, instructions the room, my mouth was open the entire time, like, “I can’t believe I’m here listening to him give a pregame speech about a game we’re about to play tomorrow.”
Willson: We have been enjoying a huge recreation, and there was a bunch of media hype. He calls up Tyler Lockett and he has a chair. He’s like: “Do me a favor. Just stand on this.” He’s like: “Do you think you can just lift one leg up?” Lockett seems to be at him and lifts the leg up. He has him do all these items: “Do a spin, do a counter spin.” I’m like, “What the f— is going on?” Then he’s like: “OK, serious question. Was any of that hard?” Lockett’s like, “No, not at all.”
Malcolmson: Then he’s like: “What if I put this on the Empire State Building? Would you be able to do it then?” Of course, the reply is no manner. He’s like: “But nothing’s different, nothing’s changed. It’s all just your surroundings.”
Willson: You’ve bought to image this is Pete Carroll’s voice, so it’s far more animated, and he’s like, “Tomorrow, we’re just playing f—ing football. Field’s the same size, football’s the same size, plays are the same. F— all this nonsense about what happens if the Seahawks lose. Go out and rip it.”
Britt: The motivational particular person he is, it’s unmatched.
Shead: Pete bought probably the most juice of any coach, anyone in America.
Griffin: There’s no one like him.
Wright: The man’s a legend.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photos: Nic Antaya, Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
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