Quote:With Gus as the coach? Probably not many, but I expect if the Jaguars had Tom Brady at QB he'd have probably had Gus fired pretty quick.

 

Really, though, counterfactual thought exercises like the above are rather a waste of time, we'll get a chance in a few months to see more of the difference that Gus was making like we did in weeks 16 and 17 of last season.

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Give Pete Carroll about one year before he starts realizing the mistake he just made. By that time, he'll be wondering why he resigned from USC to become head coach of the Seattle Seahawks....Regardless of how optimistic some Carroll supporters may be about this news, the man is going to fail in the NFL. He's already been fired by the New York Jets (whom he coached in 1994) and the New England Patriots (he was there from 1997 to '99), which is all you really need to know....Although Carroll deserves credit for securing a nice paycheck in this move, there's little else about the decision that makes sense. It's as if Carroll dismissed all the recent struggles of other head coaches who jumped from college to the NFL. Nick Saban couldn't last more than two years with the Miami Dolphins before fleeing to Alabama. Bobby Petrino didn't even finish a full year in Atlanta before racing off to Arkansas. Steve Spurrier was miserable with the Washington Redskins until he decided it was best to disappear and then land at South Carolina...What those other coaches eventually learned is that there is a substantial difference between leading grown men and leading boys who are becoming men...Carroll should know this last fact better than anybody. He never became a top head coach because the perception was that he was too soft. As much as his hypercaffeinated, rah-rah nature excited college kids who gravitated to his affable personality, it had an opposite effect in the league. The players didn't merely see a players' coach. They saw a pushover, which is the last thing an NFL head coach can afford to be...Now that he's back in the NFL, Carroll will eventually discover that plenty has changed since he left more than a decade ago. The players have gotten bigger, faster, stronger and, yes, smarter. They're probably better at recognizing a coach who isn't ready to deal with all the challenges that come with leading grown men who make tons of money. And what Carroll hasn't realized yet is that he's still the type of guy who falls into that category.