Silver And Black Pride
It’s been 10 games and the Week 11 loss to the Dallas Cowboys on Monday Night Football showed that the Las Vegas Raiders have no direction under head coach Pete Carroll. Not only were the Raiders thoroughly embarrassed on a national stage, again, but Carroll refuses to play the young players on the roster despite the team being well under .500 and outside of the playoff race.
That leaves little room for positivity in this week’s winners and losers column.
During the game, Chip Kelly took plenty of heat for the offensive play-calling and Ashton Jeanty’s lack of touches. However, during the post-game press conferences, Carroll admitted that it was his decision: “There’s only one person to look at, it’s me, because I was influencing the game plan.” While the accountability is nice, it’s another example of his refusal to focus on developing the Raiders’ rookies.
That’s on top of the situation with Caleb Rogers, where he not only didn’t start, but Carroll also opted to activate Atonio Mafi from the practice squad over the rookie. The head coach then justified his decision by saying that he’s “trying to win the games”.
Well, refusing to play the young guys has led to two wins, while moving Jordan Meredith back to guard led to his worst game of the season, and starting Will Putnam led to a team-low 34.5 offensive grade from Pro Football Focus for the center as he was dominated all night. Call me a skeptic, but I have a hard time buying that Rogers would have been much worse than that.
This is without even mentioning the fact that Tyler Lockett is getting more playing time than Dont’e Thornton Jr. and Jack Bech, Kyu Blu Kelly is still starting over Darien Porter, and Jamin Davis took snaps over Tommy Eichenberg and Cody Lindenberg on Monday night.
Whether it’s John Spytek, Mark Davis or whoever, someone needs to step up and talk some sense into Carroll.
Las Vegas has given up at least 30 points in five out of its last eight games, and the team was a missed throw by Dak Prescott away from surrendering 40 points for the third time during that period. Granted, a safety by the offense was a factor in the scoring, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Cowboys’ offense averaged nearly six yards per play and the Raiders’ defense was awful on Monday night.
Graham has survived a couple of coaching changes already, but with the entire coaching staff on the hot seat to finish the campaign, it’s looking like he’s running out of lives.
While Stone Forsythe, Putnam and Meredith could also be listed as ‘losers’, Forsythe and Putnam are backups who are only playing because of injuries, while Meredith was forced to move to a position that he hasn’t played since training camp. In other words, it’s reasonable that those three struggled, but the...
