Pete Carroll’s arrival at the Las Vegas Raiders was supposed to represent a franchise finally headed in the right direction. The team has been an inconsistent mess for two decades, so they decided to bring in the Super Bowl-winning coach in hopes that he could finally get the train back on the tracks.
Instead, the Raiders have taken a step back from the Josh McDaniels and Antonio Pierce regimes. They are 2-12 and coming off their second 31-0 loss of the season. The team is getting worse, not better.
This has led to serious questions about Carroll’s job security. According to ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler, things aren’t looking promising for the legendary coach.
“The pressure is mounting on Pete Carroll in Las Vegas after the team has struggled to stay competitive at 2-12,” Fowler wrote. “Here’s my sense after asking around Tuesday: The Raiders knew 2025 would be a bit of a slog due to some roster deficiencies, but they hoped they would stay competitive — at least more so than this season’s horrific point differential of minus-167, trailing only the Titans (minus-169). One team source acknowledged, ‘It wasn’t supposed to be this bad,’ and that something will need to change.”
Raiders Might Want to Go Young at Head Coach
If Carroll were younger, it would be justifiable to keep him for another season. The roster is a mess, it’s his first season with the team and the Raiders have had a losing culture for a long time.
However, Carroll is 74 years old and not a great candidate for what looks to be a multi-year rebuild. Fowler suggested that the Raiders are changing their thinking and might want a younger coach with more upside to lead the franchise going forward.
“Whether removing Carroll is that change has not been crystallized,” Fowler wrote. “But the proverbial hot seat chatter doesn’t appear to be going away. As one source with knowledge of the Raiders’ operation noted, what the team needs is what it thought it had with Antonio Pierce — a high-energy first-time head coach with a high ceiling. The Raiders didn’t have enough patience to find out whether Pierce (who went 4-13 in his only full season in Vegas, saddled by bad quarterback play) could mature into that. Either way, the Raiders appear to be in danger of a second consecutive one-and-done in the top leadership role.”
Any Chance Raiders Keep Carroll?
The optics of firing Carroll aren’t great. That would be the second straight one-and-done coach, which doesn’t count McDaniels, who was fired before finishing his second season. Carroll is also a proven winner and culture builder. If he has a good plan in place to find an upgrade at offensive coordinator, then maybe the Raiders just give him another chance for continuity’s sake.
That doesn’t seem like a winning strategy, but what the Raiders have been doing hasn’t been working. In the end, Carroll is likely to get let go, but it wouldn’t be a massive surprise if the Raiders gave him one more year. If that happens, he’s going to have a very short leash in 2026.
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