Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll knows all about tough road openers to start a coaching career.
That’s something new Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor confronts this weekend in Week 1, a road date with Carroll’s Seahawks.
Back in 1994 as head coach of the New York Jets, Carroll himself was tasked with going away from home and fighting a strong Buffalo Bills team.
Carroll provided some perspective on Taylor’s outlook, per Geoff Hobson of Bengals.com:
“Very similar fashion. We played Buffalo on the road when they were in the middle of their run. Good things can happen when you’re a young coach if you get lucky and we got a little lucky that day. So hopefully we can hold them off. Zac is going to have a great career. It will be good to see the mentality he brings to his club and the scheme he brings. I’ll be interested to see that.”
Carroll’s Jets won there, 23-3.
For Taylor to pull off a similar feat, he’s going to need a dynamite offensive gameplan working around the loss of A.J. Green and potentially a starting left tackle, too.
As far as that goes, Carroll noted watching the Bengals this preseason didn’t reveal much: ““There’s a bit of uncertainty there. He can do whatever he wants, so we don’t know.”
Taylor has the advantage of being a wild card of sorts, if nothing else when he goes head-to-head with a coach of Carroll’s stature over the weekend.
