PHOENIX — The love-fest reached a humorous crescendo when Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll joked with New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick about the compensation New England had to send to the New York Jets in order to hire Belichick 15 years ago.
Hilarious stuff when your former employer pays a huge price so it can hire your replacement, eh, Pete?
“(They) got a first-rounder for you?” Carroll said incredulously while sitting on a stage next to Belichick two days before their teams will face off in Super Bowl XLIX. “I was barely a free agent. Maybe that’s why they had me out of there after three years.”
Belichick was quick to point out that he too had been fired from an NFL head coaching job, quipping, “I was a free agent after Cleveland.”
Carroll and Belichick shared a stage for half an hour Friday to talk about the upcoming Super Bowl, and while plenty of topics were addressed, the clear theme of the day was an incredible amount of mutual respect, with each seemingly trying to one-up the other with verbal bouquets.
“Thrilled to have the matchup that we have with a great organization in Bill and New England,” Carroll said in his opening remarks. “They do things and they’ve done them so well for so long. It presents just as high class a matchup for us as we can expect.”
Belichick countered with, “Certainly it’s a huge challenge to prepare for the Seattle Seahawks. They’re a great football organization and they have a great team. They’re strong in every area. I think everyone knows how much respect I have for Seattle and Pete and the job that they do.”
I can’t say this with 100-percent certainty, but at some point I swear I heard Elton John’s “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” playing in the background. Or maybe it was just in my head.
Carroll was in his element here, but even Belichick, famous for his prickly interviews with the media, was occasionally smiling — this is a big deal for him — and even cracking jokes. Two of the best coaches in football face off Sunday in the Super Bowl with Carroll seeking a second-straight title and Belichick looking for Super Bowl victory No. 4 since taking over for Carroll in 2000.
Surely Carroll must hold a grudge against New England and Belichick for how things turned out, right?
“They made one of the great moves in the history of the NFL by hiring Bill Belichick.” Carroll said, apparently forgetting about the move that had to be made before Belichick could be hired.
A lot of this was just two coaches having a little fun with a press conference set up for just that, but the sincere and sometimes over-the-top compliments thrown back and forth between the two all week point to something bigger as well. These are two men secure enough with their own impressive resumes that they can, even after accomplishing so much, be impressed with how somebody else does things maybe a little differently.
It might be easy for a coach as successful as Carroll or Belichick to assume they have all the answers, but instead they both had plenty to say when asked what they wish they could emulate about the opposing coach.
For Carroll, Mr. Win Forever himself, Belichick’s ability to sustain success for more than a decade is “Something that anybody in our world would like to be able to share and understand … He’s done a fantastic job in that regards and that’s something that I would like to be able to demonstrate someday.
Belichick, meanwhile, admires the way Carroll’s teams compete and finish, most notably in the NFC championship game when Seattle came back from a 16-0 deficit.
“They play extremely hard down after down after down, week after week, year after year,” Belichick said. “They compete relentlessly as well as any team or any organization I’ve ever observed … Everybody just competes at such a high level for every single second that they’re out there, and I think that’s a great credit and attribute to Pete and his staff.
“The players they brought in there, they’re just relentless in the way that they play. So I think that any coach wants his team to play that way and I think that Seattle and Pete really are the model for that. They do a better job than anybody.”
Later when the coaches were asked what was the key to four-quarter success, Belichick looked at Carroll and said, “Tell me, Pete.”
Sunday will be all business, but on Friday, you knew these coaches were having fun when Belichick was turning into a comedian. Apparently a lot of mutual respect brings that out of these two.
Herald Columnist John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com
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