The Raiders have a new coaching staff in town, but a prominent holdover from last year’s coaching staff is first-year defensive coordinator Rob Leonard.
Leonard is entering his fourth season on the Raiders’ coaching staff and was the defensive line coach under Pete Carroll.
With head coach Klint Kubiak in the building and Leonard having no history of running his own scheme, there is some mystery to what the Raiders’ defense will look like in 2026, but two insiders covering the team agree on at least one change coming to the defense this year.
Last week, Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter said he believes Leonard is going to blitz at a higher rate than former defensive coordinator Patrick Graham and this week, Jesse Merrick reminded his podcast listeners that Leonard comes from a coaching tree that blitzes at some of the highest rates in the league.
“I think we see them bring the heat next year and blitz over 30 percent of the time,” Merrick said on his Silver & Black Sports Network podcast.
“Here’s the rationale… We know the background on Leonard in terms of learning from guys like Steve Spagnuolo, Brian Flores, Patrick Graham, and Mike McDonald. Like I’ve said on the show, I think we see pieces of each of those guys, but in particular, Flores and Spagnuolo are known for blitzing a ton,” Merrick continued.
“Last year, the Vikings led the league in blitz rate at 48 percent, and the Chiefs were fourth in the league at 31.4 percent. For reference, the Raiders’ blitz rate was 21.7 percent last year. So, I’m calling for a jump of about 9 percent. We’re approaching the 10 percent jump range there, which would put the Raiders in the top six or seven in the league in blitzing very likely next season.”
Something else to remember is that Carroll ran a defensive scheme that not only didn’t fit many of his players, but it also wasn’t the scheme Graham preferred to run.
The fact that the Raiders didn’t blitz a lot in 2025 wasn’t necessarily a reflection of Graham.
Raiders’ defensive staff wasn’t a good fit in 2025
In December, the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Vinny Bonsignore made an interesting statement on his podcast, saying he had been warned that Carroll and Graham weren’t going to be a great fit in their first year together.
“There [were] people reaching out to me yesterday that know football, that watch football and have been watching this team. It’s clear that there is a lack of an alignment between what Pete Carroll wants to do defensively, what Patrick Graham wants to do defensively,” Bonsignore said on the Vegas Nation First and 10 podcast in the final weeks of the season.
“It’s been happening all year. I was told at the very beginning of the year, before when Pat was retained, keep an eye on that because they do things completely different. Their systems are completely different.”
Additionally, Carpenter said after the season that the defensive situation in Las Vegas was so dysfunctional in 2025 that Graham was only able to run his scheme for six halves – and that only happened because he ignored the head coach.
“Not long after the team’s OTAs started, Carroll, many believe, frustrated by being ignored on offense, started to alter what he wanted from Graham. Graham desperately tried to explain to Carroll that wanting to do something and actually doing it were two different things,” Carpenter reported in May.
“A Raiders player called [and] what he had to say was not good news for an imploding Raiders team. What is up with Pete? I love the man, but he can’t hold anybody accountable and that ‘golly-gee we’ll get them next week’ pep talks are f—ked up. I think he only wanted PG [Patrick Graham] back so he could resign Maxx [Crosby], because PG ain’t doing what PG do, and when he says f—k it, it works.”
“While fans berated Graham, ever the gentleman, he refused to call out Carroll and, as a previously mentioned member of the organization, said to me again, “Everybody has a boss.” I had reported earlier that I didn’t expect Graham back, and that was the reason why. In a never-before-released detail, I can tell you that Patrick Graham essentially ignored Carroll and ran his defense for a grand total of six halves in 2025. That is an accumulative total of three games, and in those six halves, his Silver & Black defense allowed only nine points.”
x: @raidersbeat