The Las Vegas Raiders exited Week 1 with a hard-fought road win over the New England Patriots, one ignited by the fiery actions of their soon-to-be 74-year-old head coach.
On the Saturday night before their season opener on Sept. 7, Pete Carroll used the stage of his first pregame meeting with the Raiders to kick through a whiteboard in dramatic fashion, leading to pandemonium in the room in a moment those present won't soon forget. With the whiteboard obliterated, the end result on Sunday was a 20-13 victory over the Patriots.
One source described Carroll like a WWE wrestler cutting a promo, showing the team that it didn't fly to New England to mess around. The Raiders came to compete. The blasted whiteboard was the fallout.
"That's just Pete," one person in the room said. "That's how he turns the culture around."
The Raiders next play the Los Angeles Chargers on Monday night, with Carroll facing his old nemesis, Jim Harbaugh.
Carroll and Harbaugh had a memorable postgame encounter in 2009 when the two were at USC and Stanford, respectively. Years later, Carroll's Seahawks beat Harbaugh's 49ers in the 2014 NFC Championship Game en route to a Super Bowl title.
Asked this past week if he has any fond memories of facing Harbaugh, Carroll said, "I have no fond memories, I'm not going to go there. There's great games, they've been great games. That's all."
Who knows what theatrics are in store for Monday's pregame meeting, which happens to land on Carroll's 74th birthday. But a high bar has been set.
Carroll has won at every level, with national titles at USC and a Super Bowl with the Seahawks. He is one of the game's most respected culture-changers, always imploring his players to compete. He has set the expectations high in his first year in Las Vegas.
Carroll told reporters during training camp in July, "We are going to win a bunch of games. I mean, what are my expectations? We are going to win a bunch, and I don't care who hears that."
The night before Las Vegas' Week 1 game, Carroll started the process.
According to those in the room, Carroll entered from the back like WWE superstar Jey Uso, walking through the players as if his theme music was going. He took his time, allowing tension to build.
When it was time to start talking, he harped on the need to compete, especially focusing on the former Patriots in the room, considering there were so many.
Then, as the crescendo, symbolically telling them to kick in the door ... he kicked in the whiteboard, destroying it.
The room went crazy. As one source noted, "He just knows how to reach guys. This is why he's who he is."
