The Las Vegas Raiders hired legendary head coach Pete Carroll this offseason to lead this franchise out of the darkness. His fingerprints are already all over the Silver and Black's roster during the 2025 NFL season, which is no surprise considering his coaching tree has roots all around the league.
Current and former head coaches like Brian Schottenheimer, Gus Bradley, Tom Cable, Dave Canales, and Robert Saleh all crossed paths and were aided by Carroll at points in their coaching careers, further proving that the Raiders' head coach is a true developer of those who intersect with him.
But one notable assistant, in particular, helped Carroll reach the highest of heights when they were together with the Seattle Seahawks. He was able to parlay that success into multiple head coaching gigs, and he and Carroll will face off in Week 3.
Pete Carroll takes on notable former assistant Dan Quinn
That coach is, of course, Dan Quinn, the head coach of the Washington Commanders. He has stood on his own two feet for quite some time now in the NFL, but this still feels like a master vs. apprentice kind of matchup.
The two have faced off five times as NFL head coaches now, and to no surprise, Carroll holds a 3-2 advantage, as well as a two-game winning streak. They have not faced off, however, since the first week of the 2020 NFL season, when Carroll's Seahawks took down Quinn's Atlanta Falcons 38-25.
Quinn was first employed by Carroll as a defensive line coach in Seattle during his first year with the franchise, but Quinn quickly left for a defensive coordinator job at the University of Florida. It didn't take long for him to return to the Seahawks, as he became the team's defensive coordinator in 2013.
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Obviously, the Seahawks had the league's best defense, led by the ferocious "Legion of Boom" secondary that featured stars like Richard Sherman, Kam Chancellor and Earl Thomas. Seattle beat down on the Denver Broncos 43-8 in the Super Bowl that year.
The following season, Quinn and the defense dominated again, and he and Carroll became famous for putting their heads together and developing the famous Seattle Cover 3 defense.
They returned to the Super Bowl in 2014, this time losing to Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. Then, Quinn spread his wings and took the head coaching job for the Falcons in 2015.
It has been over a decade since these two have coached together, and over five years since they have faced off. But this game still has the makings of an emotional and familiar matchup between two of the brightest defensive minds in the game, a true guru and his disciple.