Pete Carroll downplays return to Seattle for Raiders' preseason opener

Vincent Bonsignore, Las Vegas Review-Journal on Aug 5, 2025

Published in Football

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LAS VEGAS — Pete Carroll’s first game as the Raiders’ coach will be in familiar territory.

The Raiders open the preseason Thursday in Seattle, a place Carroll called home for 14 years and won a Super Bowl.

He tried to downplay his trip back to the Pacific Northwest on Tuesday and the significance of his first game with the Raiders at Lumen Field, a stadium filled with so many memories that there aren’t enough scrapbooks to contain them all.

“It’s the only game we got,” Carroll said after the Raiders’ morning practice. “It happens to be in Seattle.”

Nobody was buying it, of course. It isn’t possible to spend that much time in one city, win as many games as he and the Seahawks did, and elevate a franchise to heights it had never seen and not have a strong sense of nostalgia upon returning for the first time.

So, no matter how much he tried to downplay the significance, it isn’t lost on him what it means to return.

“I feel really good about the time we spent there,” he said. “That we were able to stay with what we believed in and make it work. So that’s really what stands out about it.”

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