The Raiders have the highest-paid offensive coordinator in the NFL on their coaching staff, and according to a report this week, they tried to have the highest-paid defensive coordinator, as well.
Robert Saleh was on the short list of head-coaching candidates to replace Antonio Pierce after the Raiders’ former head coach was fired in January, and based on a report from The Athletic’s Mike Silver, the team didn’t stop pursing Saleh once Pete Carroll was hired.
“[Saleh] had three serious head coaching suitors after the 2024 season, receiving interviews from the Las Vegas Raiders, Dallas Cowboys and Jacksonville Jaguars,” Silver reported on Friday.
“Saleh was even more in demand last January as a potential defensive coordinator, 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.”
Silver is the first to report that Saleh was the Raiders’ first choice to be their defensive coordinator in 2025, and that means the organization missed on their no. 1 choice at head coach and defensive coordinator.
Presumably, Chip Kelly’s was the team’s first choice at offensive coordinator, and that decision, so far, has been among their worst.
After firing Josh McDaniels and Pierce so quickly, it’s unlikely that Mark Davis would want to give up on Carroll after one season, and on Thursday, the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Vinny Bonsignore said the Raiders’ owner is going to take a patient approach with the decision makers in the building.
“[Mark Davis has] faith in them to get this thing on the right path,” Bonsignore said of the Raiders owner on Carroll and Spytek on Raider Nation Radio’s Morning Tailgate.
“Has it happened yet? No. Two in five screams loudly of that, but that doesn’t mean you just tear it up and start all over again. That’s not going to get them to where they want to get to any quicker. [Davis] has faith in the decision makers. He’s going to stick with it. He wants to see progress, obviously,” Bonsignore continued.
“But in his mind, now is definitely not the time to start all over again. They’ve tried that. They’ve done that many times, multiple times. Just count how many different head coaches that have been here with the Raiders and general managers that have been here with the Raiders. Just in our time covering them since they got here in 2020, it’s way too many and so that’s not the course of action.”
It’s easy to say in October that there are no changes coming, but Davis is going to have a difficult decision after the season if the Raiders don’t show improvement.
Given the way the team has played in recent weeks, the Raiders are moving towards an all-out rebuild after the season, and Yahoo Sports host Jason Fitz, who is a regular on the Raiders’ flagship radio station, thinks the head coaching situation in Las Vegas should change sooner than later if Carroll doesn’t turn the season around.
“Pete Carroll needs to step down as the coach of the Raiders,” Fitz said on Tuesday. “Maybe not today. Maybe not until the end of the season, but it is now abundantly clear that he is not going to be the answer for what long-term ails the franchise.”
“You know me… I think it’s fair to say I’m not over reactionary or a shock jock and I think you also know that as we came into this season, my expectations were that the Raiders would be a seven-win team. I didn’t come in calling for the playoffs. So when I say this, I’m not saying this because wild expectations weren’t being met. I’m saying this because the timeline no longer meets the coach’s timeline.”
“It’s really simple,” Fitz continued. “When you have a coach that openly admitted at the podium this week that they are further behind than he expected they would be, my question becomes what does the real rebuild look like?”
“It’s obviously not Geno [Smith] with Chip Kelly. It’s obviously not working this season, so now you’ve got to look at it and say ‘Okay, are we going to draft a quarterback? Are we going to bring in a new offensive staff? Are we going to start this glorious rebuild process?’ And if you do that, how do you do that with a coach that’s already the oldest coach in NFL history to stand on the sideline during a game?”
“There’s no way, in my mind If you are starting a rebuild, which I believe takes 2 or 3 seasons, Pete Carroll won’t be around to see the end of it. So, the sooner you figure out who’s actually going to run your team through the next 10 years through this rebuild process, the better for the organization.”
x: @raidersbeat
They should have hired Saleh over Carroll to begin with. The Raiders coaching staff is the worst in the league. I don’t know what happened to Graham on the d side but the head coach, offensive coach, offense and defensive line coach, special teams coach, every other coach and all their scouts need to go. Saleh wouldn’t put up with this sh*t. Even after his stint with the Jets he’s got to be better than what we have.