The Las Vegas Raiders‘ offense has been so bad that the team decided to fire offensive coordinator Chip Kelly despite making him the highest-paid coordinator in the NFL less than a year ago. While Kelly deserves a lot of the blame for the poor play, he’s not the only reason the offense has been a mess.
The offensive line has arguably been the worst group in the NFL. The Raiders have up 10 sacks in the Week 12 loss to the Cleveland Browns. Offensive line coach Brennan Carroll has likely done a poor enough job to warrant getting fired, but he’s head coach Pete Carroll’s son.
Former Raiders offensive lineman Richie Incognito doesn’t care. He’s pushing the team to fire the coach.
“He’s got to go. Brennan Carroll hasn’t developed this group at all,” Incognito wrote on X. “They’ve gotten worse every single week. Zero progression, zero improvement. The fundamentals just aren’t there bad footwork, high pad level, slow hands, blown assignments everywhere. When an O-line looks this lost in Week 11, that’s 100% on coaching.
“And here’s the part that drives me crazy: we’ve got TWO third-round rookies who haven’t even sniffed the field because he can’t get them ready to play. That’s the job. Develop young linemen. Coach them up. Give them a chance to grow. Instead, this room has flat-out regressed. Nobody knows who to block and the technique is awful. … At some point you have to hold the position coach accountable.”
Will Raiders Fire Brennan Carroll?
The Carroll factor could turn into a big issue for the Raiders. Pete Carroll always preaches about “competing,” but that mantra doesn’t seem to apply to his family.
That’s something that could quickly lead to players questioning if he’s fairly assessing every aspect of the team. Brennan Carroll had never been a head offensive line coach at the NFL level. He did have some experience in college, but NFL offensive line play is a completely different beast.
Even if Carroll doesn’t want to fire his son, he needs to seriously consider demoting him and allowing Joe Philbin to run the group for the rest of the season.
Pete Carroll Talks OL Play
For an old-school coach who wants to run the ball, Pete Carroll has a terrible track record with offensive line play. The Seattle Seahawks were consistently poor in the trenches, and now the Raiders are even worse.
The fact that the Raiders brought back much of the same group of offensive linemen, but are somehow worse, is a problem. Carroll is still hoping the offensive line can turn things around this season.
“The effort moving forward is to minimize the exposure, and that calls on the rest of your game,” Carroll said. “If you take a look at how we’ve protected on our play passes, it’s a big difference between how we’re protecting in the drop back game. Hopefully we can clean that up and make that mix better and be more efficient.”
The Raiders face some excellent pass rushers the rest of the way, so it won’t be easy to hide the offensive line issues anytime soon.
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