What’s Next for the Raiders: Pete Carroll, Tom Brady, and the NFL Draft QB Picture

HENDERSON, Nev.—The Las Vegas Raiders find themselves sitting with an unexpected record, underachieving at the highest level, and a fan base bordering on the apathetic.

Things in the Raider Nation are not good.

Las Vegas Raiders Pete Carroll | Darrell Craig Harris, On SI

With a disappointing 2-12 record and a likely thirteenth loss looming in Houston, we provide the latest updates on your Las Vegas Raiders, the future of Pete Carroll, Tom Brady's involvement, and an evolving NFL Draft quarterback landscape.

This is not an issue of being a player away or simply fixing one piece of a broken position group. This is a franchise in desperate need of soul-searching and a turnaround unseen in the National Football League in a long time. The Silver and Black issues are systemic.

Watch Our Entire Podcast Addressing This

Like it or not, Pete Carroll hasn’t tried to soothe the Raider Nation with coach speak and hyperbole. They don’t deserve it, and it isn’t his style. He has taken each issue head-on, and whether you like his answers or not, he isn’t sugar-coating anything.

That is refreshing. It is not something many former coaches have given this rabid and starved fan base. The team has issues, far beyond Carroll's job security, Tom Brady's involvement, and a QB in the NFL Draft, all of which we address in our podcast.

Las Vegas Raiders QB Geno Smith, Pete Carroll | Darrell Craig Harris, On SI

A Shift In the Air

While I don’t feel anyone has quit, in Philadelphia as the Raiders took yet another drubbing, it felt different. No one quit, but you could sense many felt the beatdown was inevitable. Something Carroll wanted not part of.

“I don't sense that at all. I don't think there was that issue. I think we got beat…I don't think it's some big psych change that took place. I think we just got whipped by a really loaded football team that, on this day, had their way.”

Las Vegas Raiders Brock Bowers | Darrell Craig Harris, On SI

How Far Away is the Team

“I don't know that answer. I don't know.”

This Team Hasn’t Quit

I mentioned to Carroll that while the team hadn’t quit, they were far from the team he had predicted would win multiple games and be competitive.

He quickly took issue with the thought that they had quit, even though I said just the opposite.

“These guys, these guys fought their [tails] off. Let me address that because you brought it up. They fought their [tails] off. That was the result. They didn't stop fighting. That was the result of our play right there. I have a lot of respect for the roster we just played against and maybe they didn't look like it in the last couple of weeks or whatever, but they played like they were capable and we couldn't stop [them]. So that's what I saw.”

Again, I followed up reminding him that I never said they had quit, but that they also weren’t the team he thought they would be.

Las Vegas Raiders Devin White | Darrell Craig Harris, On SI

“I would never think – what would I base that thought on? That we would be really fighting for our life here? I had nothing but wins, background, history and all of that to set our expectations and to maintain the standards that we work by. That's what we're doing. We're still doing that. We're still practicing hard, we're still working hard, we're still studying hard. The guys are giving good effort. They're in the weight room, they're fighting their tails off. The only good thing that happened, we didn't have anybody hurt today. But they're doing all we're asking of them and this is the result against the world champs last year who maybe weren't playing quite like that for a month here or whatever, but they looked like it today. It looked like a great team today.”

Las Vegas Raiders RB Ashton Jeanty | Darrell Craig Harris, On SI

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