The Las Vegas Raiders officially made Pete Carroll a one-and-done head coach by firing Carroll on “Black Monday”. That adds to the list of failed head coaches in Las Vegas, as the next man in charge will be the organization’s sixth (including interims) since moving to the city in 2020. So, where does Carroll’s tenure rank among Jon Gruden’s, Rich Bisaccia’s, Josh McDaniels’ and Antonio Pierce’s?
The list below is in descending order from least to most successful.
5. Josh McDaniels
Record: 9-16 (.360)
While McDaniels had a higher winning percentage than Pierce and Carroll, a figure as low as the number above shouldn’t be much of a factor. Also, the former (and now current) New England Patriots offensive coordinator inherited the best situation of those three, as the Raiders were coming off a playoff appearance when he was hired.
However, McDaniels made the team worse, finishing 6-11 in year one, and lost the locker room halfway through his second season on the job. It was reported that the players lit into him during a team meeting, and Mark Davis met with the team’s leaders, which led to the head coach’s mid-season dismissal. Additionally, the combination of McDaniels’ and former general manager Dave Ziegler’s poor personnel decisions still haunts the organization and is one of the biggest reasons why it’s in this position.
4. Pete Carroll
Record: 3-14 (.176)
Carroll came to Las Vegas with hopes of winning immediately, kicking off training camp by bragging about how many times he’s won 10 games in his career. Obviously, he fell well short of that mark and didn’t deliver on that promise. The 74-year-old reportedly clashed with general manager John Spytek on how to build out the roster, and a lot of moves that had the head coach’s fingerprints on them didn’t work out, most notably bringing in quarterback Geno Smith.
As a result, Carroll’s tenure ends with the third-worst winning percentage of any head coach in franchise history, trailing only Bill Conkright (.111) and Marty Feldman (.118). Feldman was the organization’s second coach ever, hired in 1961 and fired five games into the 1962 campaign before Conkright finished as the interim that year. Then, a guy by the name of Al Davis took over.
3. Antonio Pierce
Record: 9-17 (.346)
Pierce will be remembered as a quality interim coach, guiding the Raiders to a 5-4 finish in 2023, who couldn’t handle the duties of the full-time job. He managed to get buy-in from the players, essentially by being more personable than McDaniels. However, it was pretty clear that Pierce wasn’t ready to take over the reins, struggling with the game management and administrative duties of the job.
That led to a 4-13 season a year ago, but hey, that’s still one win better than this past season.
2. Rich Bisaccia
Record: 7-5 (.583)
A case could be made that Bisaccia is actually the most successful head coach in Sin City. He has the highest winning percentage and is the only coach to make a postseason appearance. Also, he deserves credit for navigating the team through plenty of off-the-field negativity to finish with a four-game win streak and earn a Wild Card spot. But it’s a small sample size where Bisaccia was never in charge of the full operation.
1. Jon Gruden
Record (LV only): 11-10 (.524)
To be fair, Gruden’s tenure started in Oakland and was pretty ugly with back-to-back losing seasons. However, he went .500 and was 3-2 in Vegas before resigning after the infamous email scandal in 2021. Plus, the Raiders were rolling by winning three out of their first four games of the season until that story broke.
The most impressive aspect of Gruden the head coach, is that he was able to overcome Gruden the general manager. Yes, Mike Mayock deserves some of the blame, too. But it was never much of a secret about who was really calling the shots, and that duo had plenty of misses in the draft. Still, the team was competitive, and the roster was good enough to make the playoffs.
