The Raiders were hoping Geno Smith would be able to resurrect his career a year ago, but the only good that seemed to come from the Geno and Pete Carroll era was the no. 1 pick that brought Fernando Mendoza to Las Vegas.
After a 3-14 season with the Raiders, Smith moved on to where he began his NFL career, and it looks a little like the New York Jets might be targeting a high draft pick the way the Raiders stumbled into one a year ago.
But it’s also possible Geno isn’t a terrible quarterback and the unstable situation in Las Vegas is what led to arguably the most disappointing season of his career.
Mark Chichester of Pro Football Focus made the case last week that Smith was one of the unluckiest quarterbacks in the league in 2025.
“The ugliest interception total in football during the 2025 season was largely driven by variance. Smith recorded 18 turnover-worthy throws — hardly an extreme figure relative to his volume — but 12 of them became interceptions, producing a 66.7% conversion rate that sat nearly 18 percentage points above the league average,” Chichester wrote on Wednesday.
“The bad luck didn’t stop there. Smith also threw five interceptions on non-turnover-worthy plays, well above the roughly 3.4 expected based on league-average rates. Altogether, his 17-interception season paints a far harsher picture than the underlying process suggests. Under league-average interception luck, Smith’s season profiles far more like a 12- or 13-interception campaign than the 17 interceptions attached to his name in the official record.”
Among the other unlucky quarterbacks last year, according to PFF, were Brock Purdy, Justin Herbert and Joe Flacco.
The more we have learned about the Raiders’ 2025 campaign, the more obvious it has become that the coaching staff was set up for disaster from the start.
“I’m going to go out on a limb… and say that when Pete Carroll was hired and they were interviewing him, I’m going to say that the last name that he ever brought up to be his offensive coordinator was Chip Kelly in that process,” The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Vinny Bonsignore said on Raider Nation Radio’s Morning Tailgate in November.
“If that is the case… I don’t think that was the plan… I don’t think that conversation ever happened from Pete Carroll’s perspective. And if that is the case, how big of a problem was it that maybe he was, that Chip Kelly was put on to Pete Carroll’s lap?”
Kelly ended up being an abject disaster, as well as borderline incompetent, according to a report from NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero. And according to The Athletic’s Mike Silver, the Raiders also tried to hire former 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh, who many believe wasn’t the defensive coordinator Carroll wanted, either.
“Saleh was even more in demand last January as a potential defensive coordinator,” Silver reported in October. “But he made it clear that if he didn’t get a head coaching job, he was overwhelmingly partial to returning to the 49ers. That conviction held even when the Raiders, after hiring 73-year-old Pete Carroll, offered Saleh a record-breaking contract to become the team’s defensive coordinator, with the understanding that he’d be in line to succeed Carroll as head coach.”
Graham and Carroll were a bad fit from the start.
According to Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter, the defensive situation in Las Vegas was so dysfunctional last year that Graham was only able to run his defensive 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 on Monday.
“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