Raiders Insider Shares “Pivotal Moment” He Realized Pete Carroll was in Trouble

Despite the presence of Tom Brady and Pete Carroll in the organization, not much went right for the Raiders in 2025, and there has been plenty of time spent trying to make sense of what went wrong in Carroll’s one year with the team.

For those covering the team, there were signs early in the season that were probably ignored, but with Carroll’s resume as a coach, it was easy to assume he had the organization moving in the right direction.

But at around the second month of the season, it started becoming clearer that Carroll wasn’t getting the job done and for the California Post’s Vinny Bonsignore, there was a conversation in November that he says stood out. Bonsignore said he had a conversation with someone in the Raiders’ building ahead of the week 11 game against the Dallas Cowboys that tipped him off to how dysfunctional the situation was actually becoming.

On Raider Nation Radio’s JT the Brick Show last week, Bonsignore shared the details of that conversation…

“There was a pivotal moment for me that occurred this season, and for those of us that were covering the team on a day-to-day basis, you could tell pretty early on that there was, I don’t want to say necessarily dysfunction, but there were a couple of different scripts that people were operating under last year that weren’t in line with each other.

I guess in retrospect, when you think about it, Pete Carroll at his age, I think it was probably naive for some of us to think that he was going to be on that script of ‘This is going to take a while, and let’s focus on the next step and not 10 wins,’ which was way out there…

It felt like every decision that was made, and he had a huge say in those decisions, the most pronounced say in those decisions, kind of reflected that outcome and not what was for the betterment of the team as a whole, and the organization as a whole, which was, ‘Forget about the 10 wins. Let’s use each and every step, each and every roster decision, every decision that we make on playing time, all of that for the betterment of this organization, for a long duration.’

And unfortunately, for Pete Carroll, at his age, 73 years old, he just didn’t have the luxury of that kind of time. I don’t know what he said in the job interview and whether he signed off on a long-range plan, but then once got in there, it kind of changed course. It was pretty obvious, long story short, that there was a differing of opinion. There was a couple of different scripts that were going on last year that people were working under.

And the pivotal moment for me came, it was when the Raiders hosted the Dallas Cowboys on a Monday night. And if you remember, there were two occasions that Tom Brady was in the building to watch the Raiders live. They were both Monday night games at Allegiant Stadium, it was second week of the season against the Chargers, and then whatever week that was against the Dallas Cowboys. By the time that Cowboys game came around, everything was pretty much… we all knew that where the season was headed. It was just a bad situation by that point, right?

But I remember somebody from the organization before the game said to me, ‘You know, this is going to be kind of an eye opener for Tom. He’s going to see it firsthand how bad this really is, which could be a good thing. He needs to see it. He needs to see where this is live, not on film, not in retrospect, but kind of in real time, feel the energy that was in the building, see what was going on out on the field, see how far away this team was, and maybe some of that dysfunction that I was talking about.’

I just remember tucking that away, and we all know what the outcome of that game was.”

In hindsight, there were plenty of clues prior to November that the Raiders had problems, but Carroll didn’t quite endure the level of criticism Josh McDaniels did in 2022 and 2023.

For as much as the Raiders fell short under Carroll and Antonio Pierce, McDaniels seems to hold a unique place in the hearts of Raider fans and even some former players.

The fan base never truly bought into McDaniels and many of the players didn’t, either.

McDaniels didn’t connect well with the Raiders locker room

Many of the players didn’t seem to trust McDaniels in his 22 months with the team, and some reports have suggested that McDaniels wasn’t the same person away from the field as he was on the field.

Like other coaches who left the Patriots, McDaniels seemed to embrace some of the tactics that worked for Bill Belichick but didn’t translate to wins outside of New England.

According to multiple reports, players went to Raiders owner Mark Davis about McDaniels and the feedback Davis received from players was a big part of the reason why McDaniels was fired.

One of the players who wasn’t a fan of McDaniels’ coaching tactics was former first-round pick Johnathan Abram, who just this week accused McDaniels of “sabotaging” the Raiders before getting fired and returning to New England.

x: @raidersbeat