Silver And Black Pride
Plan to return to Napa reportedly won’t happen
Well, it would have been a really cool story and a fun summer.
But, you can’t cry over spilled wine.
In February, new head coach Pete Carroll got Bay Area Las Vegas Raiders fans excited when he told SiriusXM NFL Radio that the team was planning to return to Napa, California for training camp. The plan wasn’t finalized at the team, but it was the hope of the franchise.
However, Monday, while at the NFL owners meetings, The Athletic reported that it appears the Napa plan will not happen this year.
This would have been the team’s first training camp back in the Napa wine country in six years. The Raiders trained in Napa, which was always considered one of the very best training camp setups in the NFL, from 1996-2019.
The franchise was open to returning to Napa (the hometown of young Raiders’ star tight end Brock Bowers) after its 2020 relocation to Las Vegas from Oakland, but COVID and other reasons kept the team at their Henderson, Nevada training facility for camp from 2020-23.
Under one-year general manager Tom Telesco, the Raiders trained in Costa Mesa, California for three weeks in 2024. Telesco’s Chargers trained there for several years.
The Raiders could always opt to travel somewhere for training camp or work through the desert heat this summer. Too bad Napa doesn’t appear to be in the card anymore, it would have been a lot of fun.
