A commitment to mediocrity
When and Where: Week 15 at home
Last season: Antonio Pearce won fewer games in a full season in 2024 than he did as the interim coach in 2023.
Added: Alex Cappa, Geno Smith, Jeremy Chinn, Eric Stokes, Elandon Roberts
Lost: Trevon Moehrig, Jack Jones, Andre James, Divine Deablo, Gardner Minshew, Alexander Mattison
Players added or lost in order of snaps played last season.
Top draft picks: Ashton Jeanty, Jack Bech
Biggest question facing this team: What exactly is the plan?
Mark Davis is a clown owner. Bringing in Tom Brady to hire Ben Johnson failed. But Pete Carroll, who has taken the previous two teams he has coached from out of the doldrums to winning a title, brings instant credibility, even if it doesn’t work out. It probably won’t work out.
Carroll is now the oldest coach in the history of the NFL. This man is not waiting around for a multi season rebuild. The Raiders are not in position for a short term rebuild. They had no QB, so they went out and got 34 year old Geno Smith, reuniting him with Carroll, where in two seasons they went 9-8 twice and got blown out in their only playoff game.
Achieving even that will be a difficult feat in 2025. The Raiders play in a tough division, in three of the past four seasons nine wins would get you 3rd place in the AFC West, and it would take a Patrick Mahomes ACL tear to have any chance of finishing 1st.
Brock Bowers is excellent and Ashton Jeanty should be too, but the rest of this offense isn’t good enough to play at a high level. And the coaching isn’t either. To run his offense Carroll hired Chip Kelly, who ended his NFL career losing 16 straight games against teams not coached by Jeff Fisher, and going 26 straight games without his offense scoring 30 points.
The Raiders could win 8 games, doubling their win total from last year, and it will be an impressive job by Carroll. But then where do they go from there? Or maybe by the time this game rolls around they’ll be stumbling to a 6 win season and Mark Davis is on his third coach in three seasons.
