The Pete Carroll era in Las Vegas hasn’t gone as expected, and this week one of his former players shared his thoughts on what has gone wrong this year with Carroll and the Raiders.
Longtime Seahawks running back Robert Turbin made a guest appearance on the Raiders’ flagship radio station on Monday and said he believes his former head coach is struggling, in part, because of the wrong people around him.
“I knew really from the beginning, the one question mark that I had was, ‘Okay, you’re bringing in Chip Kelly to be your officer coordinator. I don’t even think these guys like each other,'” Turbin said on Raider Nation Radio’s Unnecessary Roughness with Q Myers.
“I’m thinking, ‘Okay, maybe Pete is broadening his horizon. Perhaps he’s making somewhat of a transition in his philosophy, trying new things to try to keep up with the Joneses, per se, in terms of some of the new schemes that are being developed in the NFL.’ And it turns out that, well, rivals will remain rivals a lot of times, and it just doesn’t work.”
“That connection obviously no longer exists with the Raiders. And so when you look at it and you ask, okay, what’s happened with the Raiders? It’s really that. Yes, there’s a lack of personnel there, but you could have great personnel, but if the folks behind the scenes, the guys who are calling plays, the guys who are putting together the game plan, the guys who are drafting and wanting to get guys out of free agency, if those aren’t connected, then you’re not going to have any type of success on the field anyway.”
As others have brought up before him, Turbin mentioned Tom Brady and questioned whether Brady belongs in the role he has assumed since joining the Raiders’ ownership group.
“Pete Carroll is not going to be able to have success if he doesn’t have more autonomy. I don’t know how much decision making, you know, Mark Davis is having in terms of personnel and players. We’ve talked about maybe how much Tom Brady is involved,” Turbin said.
“But the truth of the matter is this, Pete Carroll has been doing this a lot longer than Tom Brady, especially when it comes to front office and having to build and put together a team. Tom is the greatest quarterback of all time, but he’s never had to have any success from the seat that he’s sitting in right now. And it sounds like he’s been pretty, you know, involved in terms of some of the decision making.”
“Chip Kelly being one of those choices, right?” Turbin continued. “Passing up on Shedeur Sanders being another choice. So if the Raiders want to have success, I think there’s an element and a space there where they’re going to have to give a little bit more time to Pete Carroll and allow him to do his thing.”
There is a lot we still don’t know about what has been happening behind the scenes this year, but The Athletic’s Ted Nguyen said this week that the situation with the Raiders right now is as bad as it has ever been.
“Maybe it was a Tom Brady hire, and it was forced upon Pete. But again, just dysfunction. The ideas and philosophies not lining up together, which is what we’ve seen from the Raiders in the past,” Nguyen said on the Just Win podcast on Monday.
“And honestly, there’s more that I can’t tell you guys right now, but it’s as bad as it’s ever been. And I don’t know if Pete’s going to last after this year. I’ve never seen that before, where you bring in a offensive coordinator, you just don’t allow him to run his offense.”
x: @raidersbeat
I just wish everyone was smart enough to get the,Sanders, taste out of their mouths.
So far that’s about the only good decision that’s been made from this organization. I will agree that Brady never should’ve been given anything. But as it’s been said, Mark‘s buddy buddies with Tommy. And I think we can all agree that Marky Mark needs to be long gone. And also has been said, that’s never gonna happen. For obvious reasons. I mean, what else is a guy with a haircut like that gonna do? They’re not gonna make any more sequels to dumb and dumber.