Carroll, especially, left an indelible mark on the Seahawks by coaching them to their only Super Bowl title. Smith quarterbacked the franchise to winning records the past three years.<\/p>\n
Now Carroll and Smith head back to the Pacific Northwest, returning to their former home Thursday night representing the Las Vegas Raiders when they open their preseason schedule against the Seattle Seahawks.<\/p>\n
Carroll took over the Seahawks<\/a>\u00a0in 2010 after winning two national championships at Southern California as part of a seven-year run of double-digit victories.<\/p>\n His return to the NFL was a little bit of a leap of faith for Carroll after previous stops in which he went 6-10 in 1994 with the New York Jets and 27-21 in 1997-99 at New England.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was an experiment coming out of USC to go to the NFL and see if the way we had developed, the culture we had created, the concept of competing the way we did would carry over,\u201d Carroll said. \u201cMostly, it was the way we treated the people in our program. I wasn\u2019t sure. I had an inkling it would be OK, but I didn\u2019t know and a lot of people probably questioned it as well.<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t change anything. We maintained the philosophy. We adapted to the players and, of course, the game. After it\u2019s said and done, I feel really good about the time we spent there, that we were able to stay with what we believed in and make it work out all right.\u201d<\/p>\n Carroll went 137-89-1 in 14 seasons in Seattle, putting together double-digit victories eight times over a nine-year stretch. That included consecutive Super Bowl appearances, winning the championship in the 2013 season with the dominant \u201cLegion of Boom\u201d defense.<\/p>\n \u201cI loved my time in Seattle and loved the fans and the people that we met and dealt with and competed with,\u201d Carroll said. \u201cBut (Thursday\u2019s) a game for us. We\u2019re going to go play ball.\u201d<\/p>\n Carroll declared that every Raiders player was \u201clive\u201d for that game, but what that meant exactly was hard to say. That especially leaves open the question of whether Smith will take snaps other than in warmups in his former home stadium.<\/p>\n Seattle is where\u00a0Smith turned around his career<\/a>\u00a0when he signed in 2019 as the backup. He had lost his starting job with the Jets and spent one season each with the New York Giants and Los Angeles Chargers.<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t until 2022 that Smith became the starter \u2014 and he made the most of it. He led the league by completing 69.8% of his passes while throwing for 4,282 yards and 30 touchdowns with 11 interceptions. Smith was selected as the AP Comeback Player of the Year.<\/p>\n \u201cIt means a lot to me as a place where I called home for six years, was able to have a son there, and I was able to really just kind of turn my career around,\u201d Smith said. \u201cMet some really cool people, got to know a lot of great people there, a lot of great teammates over the years. Just really special things, special thoughts that come to my mind when I think about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Ex-Seattle Seahawks safety Quandre Diggs now teammates with cousin QB Cam Ward<\/a><\/p>\n
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