Former USC coach Pete Carroll’s new team needed a safety. Taylor Mays is a former USC safety. But when the Seahawks used their second pick in round one on Thursday night, Carroll didn’t pick Mays.
A full day and 35 picks later, Mays was drafted by the 49ers. And he’s not apparently happy with Carroll, whom Mays thinks wasn’t straight with him.
“Um, it was interesting,” Mays told Matt Barrows of the Sacramento Bee after being picked by San Fran. “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.”
Mays then was asked to elaborate on the reason for his beliefs regarding Carroll. “Just in terms of, I didn’t have anything to worry about, that my game was OK, that my backpeddaling 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.”
Mays also gets to play Carroll twice per year, and Mays seemed to suggest that his new team is in a better position to succeed than Carroll’s.
“I’d rather fall and go to a team where I have a chance of having a better quality career than go earlier and doesn’t have more of a chance to win,” Mays said.
Maybe there’s hope that the NFC West can eventually become interesting again.