The Raiders featured arguable the worst offensive line in the NFL in 2025 and while some of that had to do with injuries, a lot of it had to do with coaching.
It’s no secret that last year’s coaching staff was thrown together without a lot of continuity or history of working together, and ‘JT the Brick’ talked about the shortcoming of the offensive coaching staff on his flagship radio show on Wednesday.
“Throw out last year’s offensive line. They weren’t coached properly. They weren’t taught properly,” JT said on his Raider Nation Radio show.
“[There was] no teaching. They didn’t even know if they were going to play the week of gameday. Now this thing is buttoned up. So with Kolton Miller, Spencer Burford, Tyler Linderbaum, Jackson Powers-Johnson and D.J. Glaze, that looks to be your starters tomorrow night and maybe into the start of the season,” JT continued.
“But there’s three or four offensive linemen behind them that can play from Jordan Meredith… Caleb Rogers, Trey Zuhn, what a hybrid player he’s going to be. He’s going to start. I’m not going out on a limb with that one. Trey Zuhn will be a starter on this Raider team sooner than later. It might be mid part of the season, maybe end of the season, maybe the start of next year. That guy is good.”
Last month, JT made a similar statement on the 2025 coaching staff but was a little more specific on where the coaching fell short.
“We didn’t have proper teaching last year. The coaches were not instructed to teach last year. They were instructed to coach. They didn’t teach. They had too many young players who were not taught how to play football at the NFL level,” JT said in July.
“They didn’t get enough reps because they had this system of competing where a lot of them were not aware of where they stood in the depth chart of competition because the coaches didn’t communicate. The ones who were fired, and their subordinate coaches didn’t do enough time teaching. They did a lot of coaching and being very vague about what your role was going to be,” he continued.
“The biggest turnaround this year in my opinion, this is just me, is that everybody is going to be on the same page with their role. You’re either starting or you’re not. We’re not playing head games with you that you might start if you prove to be better at times or do this.”
The 2025 season is in the past, but the fact that there was so much disfunction among the coaching staff last year should come as an encouragement going forward.
In Klint Kubiak, the Raiders have one of the brightest offensive coaches in the league, and his assistants are some of the most respected coaches in the league, as well.
With the addition of Tyler Linderbaum and a host of young offensive linemen seemingly ready to take the next step in their careers, the outlook in the trenches in 2026 should be a good one.
Raiders love third-round pick Trey Zuhn
One other little offensive line nugget from JT came at the end of last month. This one involving third-round pick Trey Zuhn.
“Zuhn, there’s a lot of people whispering, whispering in hushed tones, that Trey Zuhn could start,” JT said on his Raider Nation Radio show on July 30.
“Someone told me that today, but not confident enough to get on the radio with it. They said, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he started this year.” I said, ‘Oh boy, that’d be interesting. He’s that good, huh? He’s that good?’ ‘Yeah.’ So we’ll see.”
x: @raidersbeat