Taylor Mays Lays a Hit on Pete Carroll: ‘He Needs To Be Honest’

↵↵The Trenches has already touched on the most dramatic thing from Friday’s NFL draft action, but it’s worth spelling out again: Taylor Mays is upset with Pete Carroll. Mays put his college coach on blast for giving him the runaround in a conference call with reporters late Friday.↵

↵↵⇥To say that Taylor Mays is motivated is like saying Mike Iupati is kinda big. Asked if he was entering the league with a chip on his shoulder, Mays said the following: “I’ve probably got the biggest chip on my shoulder out of anybody in the draft.”⇥⇥⇥↵⇥↵⇥Some of that chip/resentment/motivation is fueled by his former USC coach and current Seahawks coach, Pete Carroll, who yesterday took a safety in the first round, Texas’ Earl Thomas. Asked about that turn of events, there was a pregnant pause. “Um, it was interesting,” Mays finally said. “I definitely thought from the relationship we had, the things that he had told me about what I needed to be aware of with the draft process and things that I needed to do, I felt he told me the complete opposite of the actions that he took, which was definitely — it was alarming. ... I understand it’s a business. But with it being a business, he needs to be honest. And that’s all I was asking for.”⇥⇥⇥↵⇥

↵⇥↵⇥How exactly did Carroll lead him astray? “Just in terms of, I didn’t have anything to worry about, that my game was OK, that my backpedaling was fine ... my tackling was fine. It was all things that I asked — what I needed to work on, what I needed to show. I was kind of led to think that I was going to be OK. You know, it is what it is and I’m so happy to be with the 49ers on a team that Ronnie Lott played on.”⇥⇥⇥↵⇥

↵↵This isn’t the first time a USC player under Carroll has gotten bad advice. It’s unclear whether Mays’ gripe about advice is with Carroll’s coaching while he was at USC — given that Mays was the first USC player selected, his coaching last year might be worth examination — or advice Carroll, in his new capacity as Seahawks coach, gave Mays leading up to the draft. It might even be about promises to select him that were made and not kept. (I thought some of Carroll’s tweeted draft clues pointed right to Mays, but “Today Was a Fairytale” would be an appropriately brusque brush-off.) ↵↵
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↵↵No matter what, Mays will be motivated to prove doubters wrong, and that motivation has been the steam behind many a superb rookie campaign. Better yet, Mays will get his chance to make Carroll regret his decision twice a year.
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↵And the 49ers open the 2010 season in Seattle. Mark Sept. 12 on your calendars.↵

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