Pete Carroll wasn’t the lone reason for the Las Vegas Raiders’ failures this season.
General manager John Spytek — the other half of the new era duo the team brought in just this past offseason — remains while Carroll was dismissed on Monday. And during Spytek’s media session that afternoon, took on the brunt of the blame for the Silver & Black’s horrendous 3-14 record in 2025.
“I want to thank Coach Carroll from the ownership perspective and from my personal perspective as well. He was a great partner. In my first year in this job, he worked tirelessly to give Raider Nation the team and the outcomes and the results that they wanted and deserve,” Spytek said at the onset of his opening statement. “I also want to make it extremely clear, too, that I bear a ton of responsibility for the outcome of the season and our record. This isn’t on any one person, and really, I don’t want anyone to think that anyone deserves more responsibility than me and that it’s something I’m very aware of, I think about all the time, and am determined to get right. The accountability should start and stop with me, and that needs to be said.”
Spytek is right that he bears responsibility for an awful 2025 campaign. And he’ll get an opportunity to make amends as owner Mark Davis said in a statement Monday, Spytek “will lead all football operations in close collaboration with Tom Brady, including the search for the club’s next head coach.”
Not so much for Carroll who is one-and-done. Not all the blame lies on the former head coach, but an ineffective offense — namely the offensive line —, the lopsided losses, and lack of identity falls on Carroll’s shoulders.
Those are the three things that scuttled his tenure as Raiders’ boss.
1. Stench in the Trench
Las Vegas’ offensive line play was so bad at times, you didn’t have to be a student of the game to notice. Even those with rudimentary football knowledge could see it plain as day.
And as soon as Carroll’s firing was announced, one his biggest mistakes was under spotlight: Hiring his son Brennan as offensive line coach and run game coordinator.
While Carroll made both lineup changes with the depth chart and even dismissing assistant coaches — special teams boss Tom McMahon was first to go, then offensive coordinator Chip Kelly — the lack of adjustments in the trench left quite a stench. From apparent lack of details from Brennan Carroll to the Raiders offense floundering due to the play up front, Pete’s decision looks like the worst kind of nepotism/production hire in all the NFL this season.
Point to injuries sinking the Raiders ship all you want, but playing linemen out of position and having second-year lineman Jackson Powers-Johnson jump through hoops in the com-Pete mantra while others didn’t have to go through similar rigorous circumstances was suspect.
ESPN’s piece on the Raiders’ 2025 collapse dropped even more napalm on Brenna Carroll’s tenure as offensive line boss.
“An agent of a Raiders offensive lineman said that his client told him the position group met multiple times on their own with Smith and Jeanty, and specifically without coaches, so the quarterback and running back could talk to them about how they wanted the offensive line to create blocks,” ESPN’s story noted, amongst several other damning items.
“We’re going to attack this entire offseason with an extremely open mind. And anybody that can help bolster that offensive line and do the job required will be considered,” Spytek said in his season-closing address this past Monday. “We have a lot of cap space; we’ve got some elite draft picks and maybe adding a veteran presence in there or two would be helpful but not necessarily an absolute necessity. We’re not going to begin with the end in mind.”
2. An Uncompetitive Group
With a -191 point differential (241 points scored to 432 allowed), Carroll’s Raiders were on the receiving end of several lopsided defeats. Las Vegas had the third worst point differential in the league — only the Tennessee Titans (-194) and New York Jets (-203) were worse — and the Raiders’ league-low 241 total points scored was by far the saddest distinction in the NFL.
It’s a testament to the No. 1 point above, really.
But offense wasn’t the only sore spot for the team. Carroll’s squad was bad in all three phases — offense, defense, and special teams — which contributed to disconcerting defeats.
The moments where the Raiders made the opposition sweat was too fleeting and the 10 consecutive losses was a grueling stretch. It took playing an equally depleted Kansas City Chiefs team in the season finale for the the Silver & Black to notch its third win of the year.
Like Carroll’s reliance on veteran players over younger Raiders through much of the 2025 campaign, his utmost belief in his dated Cover 3 defensive scheme didn’t help as the team finished 25th in points allowed (432). The Raiders did finish with a respectable 14th overall ranking in yards allowed.
3. No Identity
The hallmarks of a Carroll-led football team were absent in Las Vegas. A physical and fast football team that wins, high-energy and aggressive, team chemistry, and identity were all absent. In fact, the only hallmark present was “Always Compete” but even that was suspect.
Even Carroll torpedoed his lone season as Raiders head coach way back in July proclaiming his team would would a ton. Instead, he along with his coaching staff and team buckled under that pressure and that boisterous claim changed expectations exponentially. Making the team’s freefall and resounding thud quite loud.
Carroll remained resolute that his football team would win games — even as losses mounted — and that had detrimental effects on team morale and player usage. Being stubborn in his win-now belief, Carroll relied on older veteran players, and even when it was clear the season was lost, didn’t give younger players and rookies valuable game snaps.
In fact, it took a 31-0 drubbing at the hands of the Philadelphia Eagles where his Raiders dropped to 2-12 overall, for Carroll to admit he was too optimistic about the roster and that a rebuild is necessary for the organization.
“I’m not real happy right now at 3-14,” Spytek noted. “I would just go back to I’m proud of those guys for them competing, and I think they’re the right kind of guys, and they’re about the right things. And my experience has been when you add the right kind of people to an organization, whether it’s scouts, analytics people, wellness, players, you’ll be okay. And we’ll just keep trying to do that with players, too.”
