Silver And Black Pride
After not being able to land a top-coaching candidate, the Las Vegas Raiders settled on Pete Carroll in 2025.
Then, the plan became for the team to pair the veteran coach with a veteran quarterback and the team settled on reuniting Carroll and Geno Smith from their Seattle Seahawks days.
The plan was to have Carroll and Smith be at the coach/quarterback combination for two or three seasons.
the plan didn’t work, of course. Carroll and Smith have both been dreadful in their roles as the Raiders sit at 2-12 in yet another lost season.
It is becoming apparent the Raiders may try to draft their quarterback of the future in 2025 with Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza and Oregon’s Dante Moore as logical targets for the team that has a strong chance to be be in position to draft at No. 1 or No. 2.
So, going that route makes sense. It also makes sense to go full in now and hire a new coach and cut bait on both Carroll and Smith after this season.
There has been a lot of talk about Carroll getting fired after this season and it’s truly the assumption around the league. Carroll himself said he expects to be back in 2o26 and is ready to lead a rebuild.
That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t make sense.
Carroll, 74, is only going to be be around for another two years, at the most, anyway. So, it doesn’t make any sense for him to be in charge of a young quarterback if it’s only going to be for the short term.
It’s the best for the Raiders to hire a new coach and staff, let them help identify which quarterback they want to roll with get the program going. Any other approach would just be stalling things and this franchise has been stuck in stall mode for too long.
So, with it becoming obvious a rookie quarterback will likely be on the way, it’s just another reason to move away from Carroll sooner rather than later.
