Pete Carroll has never been accused of being a boring coach. By all accounts, his players love him. The same thing can be said of his fans. Carroll has 100% embraced the Northwest as his home, specifically the state of Washington, and now he wants to use his position as an NFL coach to help upset one of the biggest powerhouses in college football: Alabama.
As you might know, the Alabama Crimson Tide (1) and the Washington Huskies (4) will face off in the first round of the College Football Playoffs during the Peach Bowl. When Carroll was asked about the matchup during a radio interview with ESPN Seattle’s “Brock and Sock” on Monday, he admitted that while Alabama is certainly a strong team, fans shouldn’t count the Huskies out just yet.
“Alabama’s a great team and (it has) great coaches and they’ve got a great program, but this (Huskies) team is well balanced and they’re able to take on a lot. They won’t be surprised by the style of offense. They’re gonna see a really, tough, strong, physical defense – it’s gonna be hard for them in that regard – but they have a lot of stuff that they can do, a lot of places they can go with this thing, so it’s going to be a heck of a matchup.”
Of course, Carroll knows a thing or two about college football–he helped to USC to back-to-back championships in the 2000s. He also knows the importance of practicing against teams or players who are better than you. When asked about whether or not he’d be willing to let the Seahawks scrimmage against the Huskies, Carroll was quick to answer.
“Our boys will be ready for them,” Carroll said about the possibility. “You wanna bring them out here? Come on, bring ’em over here, Coach.”
It’s not unusual for big college teams to scrimmage against superior talent, but as far as we can tell this would be the first time that an NCAA team would scrimmage against an actual NFL team. Previously, Alabama has used some graduates and ex-NFL players to help them prepare for upcoming weeks. For example, the Crimson Tide used Trent Richardson to simulate the speed and power of LSU’s Leonard Fournette.
There have to be some NCAA rules that would prohibit this kind of unfair preparation and recruiting but the limitations are a little hazy right now. Incredibly, Washington would actually have an advantage over Alabama if they were to use an NFL team since there’s no NFL team associated with the state of Alabama, unless you count Bama.
