Pete Carroll has been tactfully critical of the way the Chip Kelly has utilized Ashton Jeanty in the first half of the season, and it sounds like the 74-year-old head coach is as close as he’s ever been to demanding the offense go through his rookie running back.
Carroll did his weekly interview with Raider Nation Radio host JT the Brick on Tuesday, and the team’s long-time radio voice said he’s never been more confident in the way Jeanty is going to be involved going forward.
“I have never been more sold on Pete Carroll wanting to run the ball than today,” JT said on his Raider Nation Radio show on Tuesday.
“You want to take something out of this monologue and clip it? Clip this. I have never been more sold today on Pete Carroll’s philosophy of running the football. Everything going forward moves on that. They have got to establish the run to get Geno [Smith] going. He didn’t tell me that specifically, but I’m a talk show host, and I can tell you what my impressions of the interview that I conducted. I look him in the eye, he looks me in the eye. He wants to run the ball. Everything is predicated on getting this kid Ashton Jeanty going. If it does, it opens it up for Geno.”
Since the day he was hired, it’s been no secret that Carroll wants to lean on the running game, and there has been an ongoing conversation around why the Raiders have under-utilized Jeanty in the first seven games of the season.
Jeanty only carried the ball six times against the Chiefs in week 7 and it sounds like Carroll is intent on keeping Jeanty involved in the offensive gameplan going forward.
It’ll be interesting to see how successful Jeanty is against the Jaguars as they are currently the sixth-best run defense in the league based on rushing yards surrendered. Additionally, only five teams are giving up fewer rushing yards per carry than the Jaguars at 3.9 YPC.
For what it’s worth, Carroll’s message to Kelly three weeks ago (below) seemed pretty clear. Maybe this will be the week the Raiders’ coaching staff follows through.
“The running game has looked well… we need to get more of it. That’s part of it. That’s just mixing football. That’s how you do it. We don’t want to ever rely on the quarterback to do the whole show and sit in shotgun and throw the football. Never coach that way,” Carroll told members of the media at his October 8 press conference.
“And then, we’ve got to make sure we’re calling all the best stuff in the situations,” Carroll continued. “[Smith is] not calling the plays. We’ve got to call them, and we’ve got to make sure to get him in the right spots and give him the best chance to stay out of harm’s way.”
x: @raidersbeat
Will leave aside for the moment whether Pete Carroll is the right head coach for this team or not, but in general, a head coach should have an offensive coordinator that carries out the vision for what he wants to see in an offense and if Chip Kelly is resistant to doing this then Chip Kelly needs to go.
So we can’t fire head coaches after 1 year but we can fire their hand picked assistants?
JT the Richard is a moron. Can’t run the ball when your center has no push & Pete benches the best lineman. Plus when you’re getting blown out you don’t exactly commit to the run
I’m not so sure Chip was PCs “hand picked OC” and if he was, he’s not running the the overall kind of offense PC teams ran in the past.