Pete Carroll is back in the NFL, and he's back where he belongs. The new Las Vegas Raiders head coach has no ties to the franchise, but if he's going to take a job, he took the right one.
In taking the Raiders job, Carroll has sparked the third and final chapter of his longstanding rivalry with his nemesis: Jim Harbuagh.
The two men were born a dozen years apart, raised in different parts of the country and could not be further apart in personality. Which makes them such great foils for one another.
Below, here is a brief(-ish) history of the great coaching rivalry of our time.
Chapter 0: The prologue. Technically speaking, Harbaugh and Carroll (or Carroll and Harbaugh) first crossed paths on Oct. 11, 1987, when Harbaugh was a rookie quarterback for the Chicago Bears and Carroll a third-year secondary coach for the Minnesota Vikings. Harbaugh's Bears went 2-0 against Carroll's Vikings that season, though Harbaugh didn't play in either game.
Harbaugh didn't start for Chicago until 1990, and by then Carroll was the New York Jets defensive coordinator. On Sept. 23, 1991, coach and player finally squared off: Harbaugh went 28-of-42 for 303 yards and a touchdown in a 19-13 Bears win over the Jets.
Carroll would get the last laughs, though. He'd face Harbaugh the Player thrice more and win them all: 18-17 as the 49ers defensive coordinator in 1995, and then a sweep as the Patriots head coach in 1997.
Harbaugh retired from playing in 2000 and entered coaching as the Oakland Raiders quarterbacks coach in 2002. Carroll was already in the process of turning USC into the premier program of its time. The Trojans would win a Pac-10 co-championship that fall, slaughtering Big Ten champion Iowa in the Orange Bowl and finishing No. 4 in the AP poll.
While Carroll built USC into a monster, Harbaugh climbed the coaching ladder like Alex Honnold. Two seasons was enough of working for someone else to convince Harbaugh he wasn't an assistant coach, he was a head coach. He took the a job at non-scholarship San Diego in 2004. The Torreros were generally successful under then-head coach Kevin McGarry, but Harbaugh turned them into a rocket ship: 7-4 in 2004, then back-to-back 11-1 seasons in 2005 and '06.
That was enough to get him the Stanford job.
Chapter 1: The Pac-10. Harbaugh entered the Pac-10 on anything but equal footing with Carroll. Put it this way: both teams had disappointing years in 2006, the year before Harbaugh took the Stanford job. USC went 11-2, shared their fifth straight Pac-10 title, and beat No. 3 Michigan in the Rose Bowl. Stanford went 1-11.
None of that deterred Harbaugh. It motivated him.
Their first meeting came on Oct. 6, 2007 at the LA Coliseum. Stanford was 1-3, USC was 4-0 and ranked No. 2 in the country. The Trojans were 42-point favorites. They led 16-7 entering the fourth quarter. Harbaugh had Carroll right where he wanted him.
At the time, it was the biggest point-spread upset in college football history (surpassed a decade later by Howard beating UNLV as a 45-point dog).
USC hammered Stanford 45-23 in 2008 en route to another Pac-10 title, but the dynamic fully flipped the following year. In fact, rarely does the balance of power in a conference flip as clearly as it did on Nov. 14, 2009. USC came in ranked No. 9 and Stanford not at all, but the Cardinal hammered the Trojans on that day.
In fact, Stanford pummeled USC so thoroughly that Carroll cried uncle afterward. Carroll's deal was that Harbaugh's Cardinal had just run the ball down USC's throat and the Trojans couldn't stop it.
Up 42-21 in the fourth quarter, Stanford ran the ball on six consecutive plays, went for two to hit 50 points, missed, committed a personal foul on the first play of USC's next possession, intercepted the ball on the second play, and then ran the ball seven straight plays for another touchdown. In a game with a 21-point margin, Stanford hammered USC's defense for basically eight consecutive minutes. Stanford finished the game with 50 carries for 325 yards and five touchdowns.
Advantage: Harbaugh
Chapter 2: the NFC West. Carroll left for the Seahawks four games later, while Harbaugh remained at Stanford for one more season, going 12-1 with an Orange Bowl victory.
Inheriting a team that went 6-10, Harbaugh immediately led San Francisco to a 13-3 regular season and a berth in the NFC Championship. The Niners went 11-4-1 with another NFC title game berth in 2012. Along the way, they went 3-1 against Carroll's Seahawks.
Everything came to a head in 2013. The clubs split their regular season meetings, but Seattle finished a game ahead of San Francisco in the standings, which allowed the Seahawks to host the NFC Championship.
That set up a game that, in my opinion, remains the best NFL game of my lifetime. Fueled by the animosity between their head coaches, these teams flat out did not like each other, and it turned into an absolute classic.
I'd embed the full highlights here but the NFL hates fun so I can't, but I encourage you to find them elsewhere.
San Francisco led the entire game until Seattle took the lead on a wide receiver pass to Russell Wilson with 13:44 to play. The 49ers turned the ball over on their final three possessions: a Colin Kaepernick fumble in his own territory that resulted in no points after Wilson fumbled on 4th-and-goal from the 1; a Kapernick interception in San Francisco territory that Seattle converted into a field goal and a 23-17 lead; and then, throwing into the end zone on 1st-and-10 at the Seattle 18 with 30 seconds to play, a Kaepernick pass intended for Michael Crabtree that Richard Sherman tipped to teammate Malcolm Smith.
Seattle beat Denver 43-8 in the Super Bowl two weeks later.
Advantage: Carroll
Chapter 3: the AFC West. We know the history from there. Carroll remained with Seattle through 2023 but didn't win another Super Bowl, while Harbaugh went on a hero's mission to win a national championship at Michigan, which he finally did in 2023.
And now fate has brought the two back together.
Harbaugh took the LA Chargers to the playoffs in his 2024 debut, but the team has a long way to go to catch Kansas City, Buffalo and Baltimore in the AFC. Las Vegas has even further to go. The club hasn't won a playoff game since winning the AFC in 2002, and has only made the playoffs twice since then.
The Chiefs play in their seventh straight AFC Championship on Sunday, in search of an unprecedented third straight Super Bowl victory. Denver made the playoffs in 2024 as well, showing promise under head coach Sean Payton and rookie quarterback Bo Nix. The Raiders have a new GM and no long-term answer at quarterback.
But Carroll has 267 career victories in the NFL and in major college football. He's one of three men to win a Super Bowl and a national championship. Harbaugh nearly won a Super Bowl with San Francisco, and is now trying to join the club in Los Angeles.
And to get to their goal, each man will have to go through the other. What a great turn of events.