The Raiders fired Special Teams Coordinator Tom McMahon last week, but the decision makers in the building have much bigger problems to sort through in the months ahead.
Every indication is that the organization is committed to head coach Pete Carroll and the remaining coaching staff, but if the team continues to spiral in the wrong direction, it’s fair to wonder if Mark Davis, Tom Brady and GM John Spytek will eventually rethink some of their positions.
Additionally, there’s another rumored dynamic that has been floating around since September that offensive coordinator Chip Kelly is essentially Brady’s guy in the building.
ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio seems to be aware of those rumors and made an interesting reference to Brady and Kelly’s relationship last week.
“I just wonder how the coaching staff will change after this season. There has been some talk, and I don’t know what’s accurate or not, Tom Brady is not going to text me and tell me. And I don’t have the keys to the inner sanctum. But if Chip Kelly is a Brady guy, and I don’t know, I don’t know how this all plays out after the season,” Florio said on PFT Live last week.
“Pete Carroll was one and done 31 years ago with the Jets. And we see one and done like when one and done happens, we’re like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe it.’ And then I pull up our story with all the one and done’s from the past 10 years [and] it’s like, ‘Hell, it happens a lot.'”
“I just don’t know where this is going for the Raiders, and I wonder what Tom Brady thinks…”
It was reported in September that Kelly and Brady work “closely together” each week, but a tweet from the NFL’s official X account was deleted within an hour of making that statement in week 2 of the season.
Additionally, it’s pretty remarkable that Brady or anyone else was able to get the NFL to delete the tweet (below) so quickly.
Someone didn’t want Brady linked to the Raiders’ coaching staff and even the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Vinny Bonsignore seemed a little skeptical the day after the tweet was taken down.
“I guess it’s debatable how much input [Brady] actually has, and it’s something to keep an eye on,” Bonsignore said on Raider Nation Radio’s Morning Tailgate.
“I’m sure we’ll be asking Pete that question again this week, and certainly Chip Kelly, because it sounded like, and this is some paraphrasing, because… it sounded like it came from Chip [Kelly], right? It sounded like based on what was talked about on ESPN, that Chip said, ‘Hey, we talked three times, you know, we talked multiple times a week and break down films.”
Despite being heavily involved in the Raiders’ offseason and even taking secret trips to Las Vegas to discuss the quarterback situation, Brady has publicly distanced himself from the team’s day-to-day operations.
Brady’s relationship with Kelly, whatever it is, might not lessen Kelly’s chances of being fired after the season, but it might explain why Kelly and Carroll haven’t always been on the same page in terms of play calling.
If Brady is wanting certain plays and concepts incorporated into the offense while Carroll is pulling Kelly in another direction, could that be one of the reasons why the Raiders’ offense has lacked identity over the first 10 weeks of the season?
There is still a lot of football left in the 2025 season but with injuries mounting, the second half of the season is not on a better trajectory than the first.
Big decisions are coming in the Raiders’ organization between now and March and there’s a good chance the coaching staff and definitely the players on the roster are going to look a lot different in just a matter of months.
Vinny B tweeted a year ago that Mark wanted Brady to have greater say. And now that Brady’s decisions have shown to suck, like we knew they would, Mark’s mouthpieces have started the “Brady’s not in charge” narrative even though we see with our own two eyes that he’s in the coaches box during a game yet now he can’t attend our football games.
No more Commitment to Excellence here it’s just Controlling the Narrative now
I agree. I think Mark Davis did what he usually does because he’s kind of van NFL loner, and brought Brady in as someone who is famous and associated the winning, even though Brady had zero experience in personnel or scouting. When fans and the rest of the football world scratched their heads, and the decisions most associated with Brady started to fail, they try to minimize role and control the story. Pete Carroll, another famous person Mark hired, is doing the exact same thing, trying to get his side out there that it’s all Chip’s fault.
Everyone sucks at their job, and they’re all engaging in propaganda and information warfare. This is not how successful organizations operate, and why it is likely that the Raiders will never be a successful organization with Mark Davis as owner
Us long-time die hard Raider fans with black and silver blood running through our veins have gotten numb to this Groundhog Day scenario and want it ended once and for all. We’ve lived through 23 years of total embarrassment with no end in sight. I’m sure I’ll fool myself into being optimistic when the next season rolls around, please do me a big favor and surprise me when it does.
Of course the team will look different next year – this is a pattern all us fans see year in n out. This team should have been put together much better than what it currently is. But again it starts at the top with the worst owner in the history of the league. Every year he proves to us how completely opposite he is to his great father Al.
We may as well pay another head coach to not coach this team by firing Carroll. Then we will have more salary cap space that we wont spend next season as we did this season. I am done buying into the bs they sell us each year only to be angry every week waiting for the offseason to come after the first handfull of games.
Nothing will change until Mark n all the moves he has made are gone from this team. We will continue to waste good players then lose them. We deserve to lose because our owner knows s**t about the sport then brings in wrong people to help make those decisions.