The Raiders seem to be in a tailspin at about every level of the organization right now, but one insider covering the team believes now is the time to double down on head coach Pete Carroll.
On Monday, Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter addressed some of the problems plaguing the Raiders this year and he still believes Carroll is still the right person to turn the organization around.
“Pete Carroll is a Hall of Fame coach. He is one of the greatest football coaches to ever coach the game of football. It’s not like he came here and forgot how to coach,” Carpenter said on the Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast.
“I think Mark Davis needs to call the organization in. He needs to sit John Spytek, Tom Brady and Pete Carroll down and say Pete is going to be the dominant voice. He’s the guy I’m giving the keys to and entrusting to turn this around,” Carpenter continued.
“I’m going to keep hammering that because that is the reality. Who are you going to go get? You’re going to go get a rookie coach? That’s not what this franchise needs. You’ve tried that. It failed.”
Another report on Monday from league insider Ari Meirov said that Carroll and GM John Spytek have not necessarily been “eye to eye” on the direction of the organization, and Meirov seems to believe there is a good chance Carroll won’t be back with the Raiders next year.
“The sense that I get… the front office [and] coaching staff, it’s not eye to eye right now. It’s just not and that’s a problem,” Meirov said on the NFL Spotlight with Ari Meirov.
“Let’s make this clear, every team has that. Every coach is thinking about the here and now, and every GM is thinking about the here and now, but also next year, two years, three years down the line,” Meirov continued. “When you’re talking about a 74-year-old head coach, that’s a whole different ballgame… so that dichotomy has been fascinating to follow all year and I think something is going to happen at the end of the year. I just don’t know what it is yet.”
“There’s just a dichotomy of ‘we’ve got to win right now’ verses ‘we’ve got to prepare for the future’ and it’s just not a good balance right now. That’s why I think something is going to happen. Maybe it’s just Pete, because Pete [is] a brilliant coach, good culture guy, great energy, still doing it at a high level, this just probably wasn’t the job for him right now considering where the roster was, where the division is, and all those different factors. So I think something is going to happen. They play the Cowboys on Monday night. By the time everyone hears this, the game will be over…”
It will be interesting to see how the offseason plays out in Las Vegas because it’s no secret that Carroll was not Tom Brady’s first choice to get the job.
If Carroll isn’t seeing eye to eye with Spytek, it’s probably a safe assumption that Spytek has the support of Brady.
But if that’s the case, it’s fair to wonder where Mark Davis stands on Carroll’s future.
Brady and Spytek have seemingly been given the keys to the organization on the football side of operations, but Davis still sits in the big chair and if he wants to give Carroll another year, he has the power to make it happen.
Davis said last month that he wants to take a more patient approach with the current leadership in the building.
It will be interesting to see if his position changes if the season doesn’t change trajectory between now and the first week of January.
x: @raidersbeat
Hondo is an idiot. Pete just showed us that his whole agenda against JPJ was politics. Why would this team trust anything Pete says after the OL debacle
To every person that will listen, the product (football team) that is being put on the field as
the Las Vegas is woefully lacking in just about every phase of game of football. We all see
teams like the Chicago Bears, Los Angeles Rams, etc.., teams who were in the very same
position as the Raiders a couple years ago now put a better version of themselves on the field each week. Why has this team not progressed? This is not Pete Carroll’s fault. This
team has continued to go backwards since the Jon Gruden experiment. The Monday night
performance was an embarrassment. I am embarrassed with the product that Raiders are
putting on the field. And, I understand why they are not on national television more.
The Carroll Family of “Coaches” (they don’t deserve the Title of Coach) is a Clown show…
OMG. You can easily identify two critical failures. One was the GM not addressing the offensive line instead of taking a running back at six.
Two, Pete Carroll’s ideology of a bright future with Geno Smith.
In all fairness Geno gets a little window of respite from the hate because of the worst offensive line in the history of the NFL and the Raiders.
Really stupid opinion. Coach Biden is 74 years old, was fired by Seattle who improved after they got rid of him, has decimated this team. Hired his son to be the O line coach. O line is the worst in the league. Needlessly started a mind game with JPJ even though JPJ is the best O lineman in the team. Divided the team between his guys and everyone else. Insisting in keeping Geno Smith as the starter despite Geno being awful.
Coach Buden refuses to change. Time to change the coach.