The Raiders’ offensive line was one of the worst in the NFL in 2025, and according to the California Post’s Vinny Bonsignore, even people in the Raiders’ building were blown away by how bad the offensive line was last year.
“I’m going to throw this at you, talking to some people in the Raider organization as they assessed, actually it was during the season, late in the season. I was told that the coaching along the offensive line last year, and this is by somebody that’s been around the NFL for a long time, it was the worst he’s ever seen,” Bonsignore said on Raider Nation Radio’s Morning Tailgate in June.
Injuries were a factor in the Raiders’ failure in the trenches, but there’s no question that coaching also played a role.
Former offensive coordinator Chip Kelly was paired up with Pete Carroll’s son as his offensive line coach, and a lot has already been reported on their forgettable time together. Kelly ended up being fired after just 11 games, and Brennan Carroll held on to his job to the end of the season.
But moving into the 2026 season, the Raiders have added Rick Dennison to coach their offensive line, and Dennison is one of the most respected coaches in the league.
Former Raider Richie Incognito was on the Raiders’ flagship radio station this week, and he talked about what Dennison brings to the team, as well as what he was told about last year’s coaching staff.
“We’ve got a lot of youth up front, so for a coach like Rick Dennison to come in with his pedigree and all his coaching, we were together in Buffalo in 2017. He was the offensive coordinator the year we broke the playoff drought, and I know he is a highly detailed guy. He can teach these guys technique and that’s the one thing that was missing last year was the teaching component,” Incognito said on Raider Nation Radio’s Unnecessary Roughness with Q Myers.
“Talking to the guys, they were really frustrated. Our group of guys, they worked really hard on the offensive line and throughout the entire Raiders team. These guys work hard and their frustration last year was they are putting in all this time, they’re not getting the results on the field, but they really felt like they weren’t getting coached up in the meeting rooms, so there was a lot of frustration.”
“I think that frustration is completely gone with a guy like Rick Dennison. He is highly detailed. He’s all about fundamentals. He’s going to get these guys all on the same page and you could see it in the preseason. You could see the double teams happening, the bodies hitting the floor. The backs hitting the holes, so it’s an exciting time.”
Raiders also upgraded their quarterbacks coach, David Carr says
On the Home Grown with David & Derek Carr podcast, David Carr was asked to name the hardest working coaches he has ever been around, and Carr named Mike Sullivan from their time together with the New York Giants.
“That dude, you talk about having answers to the test, he will spend countless hours and days finding obscure coverages and fronts that these guys played against a certain formation that you have to where when you go on the field, you had all the answers. [He was] never surprised. He was uncanny about that,” Carr said of the Raiders’ 59-year-old quarterbacks coach in May.
Sullivan has coached in the NFL for 22 years, has been a quarterbacks coach for seven seasons, and been an offensive coordinator for four seasons. He also has nine years of experience as a college coach.
Kubiak wasn’t initially going to have a quarterbacks coach (the Raiders waited until March to hire Sullivan), but Sullivan’s familiarity with Kubiak ended up bringing the two together in Las Vegas.
x: @raidersbeat
Just remember Brady brought this crap in last year & said Darnold wasn’t an option but was ok with Geno. So when Kubiak turns this around, remember who it started with
Brennan Carroll was the biggest fraud in the whole NFL. Kubiak is a breath of fresh air. Thank God the Coach Biden and his son, Gomer Pyle, are gone.