Silver And Black Pride
Out goes Tom McMahon. And up steps Derius Swinton II to fill his shoes as interim Las Vegas Raiders special teams coordinator.
McMahon’s dismissal last week was, of course, warranted. The Silver & Black special teams group — normally insulated from the disarray besieged upon the offense and defense — joined in the fray of incompetence this season.
As a holdover from the Josh McDaniels staff in 2022, McMahon’s unit has been on the receiving end of lowlights to the opposition’s highlights. From blocked field goals to punts, to whiffed kicks, tackles, and getting torched by return men, special teams is in the “all three phases of the game are awful club”.
“Yeah, I thought we needed a change. And I love Tom,” Las Vegas head coach Pete Carroll said when asked about the former special teams boss this past Monday. “He’s a great dude, and he’s done a great job for us. He’s a career ball coach, but I thought we just needed a change, and part of that is that I want to see what Derius does with it and see how he handles it. I mean, he’s done it before. He’s been in this situation before, he’s been a teams guy before, and he’s very well-versed. But I think it was time for a change there, and that’s why we did that.”
“Yeah, he’s very good communicator, very active on the field, hands on type of coach, really skilled in scheme,” Carroll added regarding Swinton. “There’s not time to change a bunch of our scheme at this point, but it’s to emphasize and focus on things that we think we needed to get better. And so, I’m hoping that the voice change will help us in that regard.”
Kicker Daniel Carlson had a stellar 2022 campaign making first-team All Pro but since, his accuracy has waned going from 91.9 percent, to 86.7, 85.0, and 75 percent his season under McMahon. Punter AJ Cole III has seen two of his punts get swatted by free rushers, matching the 2024 total of two blocked punts. And due to the coverage units inability to tackle properly and lack of lane discipline, the two-time first-team All Pro punter (2021 and 2023) has a career-low net yards per punt average (this includes return and touchback yardage along with blocked punts) of 37.5 yarders per boot.
Thus Swinton’s priorities as the special teams skipper: Help get Carlson out of his funk/slump, improved tackling and lane discipline on kickoff and punt coverage, and focus on fundamentals in field goal and punt protection.
Carlson is 12 of 16 on the year and his latest miss — a game-tying 48-yard field goal against the Denver Broncos last Thursday night — highlights a scattershot 2025 campaign which is similar to his 2019 season (19 of 26; 73.1 percent). This isn’t the kind of year the 30-year-old Auburn product wants, especially as he’s in a lame duck year in terms his...
