Carroll's Strategy Revealed After Raiders Introduction, Not During

The Las Vegas Raiders are looking for Pete Carroll to boost the organization to another level. He gave a hint as to how he plans to go about doing that.

Jan 27, 2025; Las Vegas, NV, USA; Las Vegas Raiders coach Pete Carroll at press conference at Intermountain Health Performance Center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

The 2024 season saw a renaissance of the running back. The best teams in the NFL featured strong running games; look at Philadelphia, with 2,000-yard rusher Saquon Barkley -- they are the NFC representative in the Super Bowl this coming Sunday.

Baltimore had an outstanding performance from Derrick Henry, a future Hall of Famer and ageless wonder. The Detroit Lions, 15-2 and the NFC's No. 1 seed, had the best duo in the league with Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montomery.

Complimentary football has never been out of style, even though the league has shifted to leaning on an attack through the air.

The Las Vegas Raiders hired Pete Carroll to reinvigorate the franchise and embue the Silver and Black with a sense of stability and continuity. One of the ways Carroll can do it is through a strong ground attack. It's easier said than done; the Raiders had the worst ground game in the league in 2024.

That being said, Carroll's year off from football allowed him to pay attention to the game in a way he couldn't as coach of the Seattle Seahawks for over the last decade-plus.

Though he touched on it a little bit during his introductory presser, it was afterward on a Raider Nation radio show, featuring JT the Brick and Eric Allen, that he could truly expound on the revival of running the rock.

"The quarterback position is so unbelievably overblown," Carroll said. "There is only a few guys that are the great ones, you know, and they can change the game but there's not many guys like that. ... But you can still be highly successful and productive in building your team around the game that allows the quarterback to manage his aspect of it. ... Boy, it's come back to running the football.

"Look at the clubs that are, you know, look at what Danny Campbell's done [with the Lions]. ... We are going to keep on controlling the football with those long drives that they are capable of. The function and the execution of the game are really built around being able to run it. The Eagles are probably the most obvious demonstration of it because Saquon is so out of this world. But look what has happened to the quarterback, Hurts hasn't had to do that much. It's been easy for him. That's the whole point."

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