For This Week, At Least, Carroll Is Vince Lombardi

In the manic-depressive sports world we all inhabit, now is the time to nominate Pete Carroll for the Football Hall of Fame.

After all, his team has just won a game.

“We were able to get a solid win against a Buffalo team that had been pretty hot in our division,” he declared at the regular day-after briefing.

How “hot” the touchdown-impaired Bills are, or were, is open to question, but, yes, it was indeed a “solid” win and so the fans and the media have taken a vote and are now allowing the embattled mentor to live long enough to coach next Sunday’s game in Tampa. Other than that, we offer Mr. Carroll no guarantees.

I mean, hey, it’s a tough world. We’d like to think that even a guy from northern California could relate to that. Three losses in a row? This team? We coulda had him whacked, and we all know there is no jury around here that would have convicted the perps for anything more severe than jaywalking.

But it sure was good to see Coach C walk in with a smile on his face, and that’s the literal truth. He was feeling good, and why not? His team had won. The dreaded Jets, coached by you-know-who (having ingested a month’s worth of nasty pills, in case you didn’t hear about his postgame act that featured screaming at the PR man because the players were slow getting to the bus), had lost.

In the inner sanctums of Foxboro Stadium, it doesn’t get any better than that.

Now was the time to speak good thoughts, happy thoughts, go-get-‘em thoughts. He even cracked a little wise.

“We told Curtis (Martin) to fall down on the 1 so we could work on our goal-line offense,” he joked.

“What happened yesterday was an outburst,” he said. “It was an outburst of energy on the part of the whole team. It was all very positive. The guys were supporting one another. They were jumping off the bench when somebody did something good. We have to be a high-energy team. If we’re not, we fall into the trap of being an up-and-down team.”

There had been much discussion Sunday of “challenges” issued to Chris Slade and Willie McGinest, but no one ever indicated just precisely what type of methodology the mentor employed in issuing those challenges. Did he brandish a firearm? Did he lay dresses on the stools in front of their lockers? Did he suggest that he doubted they could get any playing time at MIT?

Not quite, says the coach.

“It was just an opportunity I have in front of our team a few times a week to speak to them and address whatever is at hand,” Carroll said. “That’s the time if you want to challenge somebody. I just made it clear at the time that it was time for those guys to have an impact on the game if we were going to take a step forward. But I just don’t want to go into what we talked about. You guys don’t need to hear that directly. It was quite clear what was at hand.”

He waxed rhapsodic about the Derrick Cullors kickoff return (“There is no question that it was the real spark we needed”), the play of the secondary (“A real good effort”) the continuing contributions of Troy Brown (“He has the confidence to make plays; he’s just not the biggest or fastest guy”), and the job Bruce Armstrong did on Bruce Smith (“Over the years, our Bruce has developed ways of dealing with him”).

He reiterated that it had been a game of significant key plays.

“The game was highlighted by a number of big plays,” he declared. “On a day when our offense was not as productive as it needed to be, we found other ways to gain control.”

Of course, this was once-proud Buffalo, which is no longer ashamed to win games without scoring so much as one touchdown. Beating Buffalo, even in Rich Stadium, doesn’t feel the way it used to. This game may very well have told us more about the Bills than it did about the Pariots. Score twice against Marv Levy’s team and you’ve got a great chance to win.

So let’s give Carroll credit for not making too much of this. He made it clear he is looking for better, more efficient offense. He was able to nitpick, just the way you-know-who would have done following a comparable game (“Don’t make too much of this, fellas”).

“We weren’t consistent offensively when they turned the ball over to us in good field position,” he pointed out. “We didn’t go downfield and score. That’s what you have to do in those short-field situations.

Sometimes coaches exaggerate to prove a point, but this was not one of those times. Second-quarter interceptions provided the Patriots with the ball at the Buffalo 30, the New England 32, and the Buffalo 29. Point potential: 21. Actual points: 3.

You can get away with that against Buffalo, which might have a hard time scoring if it were 11 vs. 8. The elusive Warrick Dunn and the punishing Mike Alstott are another matter. And while Trent Dilfer may not be Joe Montana, he’s still better than anything Buffalo’s got.

So we’ll see whether Carroll is smiling next week. We can always withdraw that Hall of Fame nomination.