Las Vegas Raiders head coach Pete Carroll once again sounded like a coach trying to sell progress at the exact moment the standings refused to cooperate. Luckily for Raider Nation, this might be one of the last times they’ll have to hear these pressers.
Asked whether the organization is happy with the development of young players, Carroll pointed to a late-season shift in urgency. He said he and general manager John Spytek noticed that “the younger guys … have kind of felt the sense of responsibility” and that their “confidence” is rising because “they know that they’ve played, they can do it now, and they can play on this stage.”
That is a reasonable coaching note. It is also an indictment of how long it took to arrive.
Too little, too late for the besieged Raiders coach…
In the NFL, “good signs” in January don’t erase the receipts from September. If the roster is only now “kind of” elevating, fans are right to ask why that sense of responsibility wasn’t the weekly standard—and whether the bar has quietly shifted from winning games to applauding effort because the wins ran out.
Carroll called this late-season stretch “opportunity time,” saying he wants “as competitive an environment as we can get for the roster spots.” He pointed to Charles Grant, who has “looked pretty good now,” but the compliment came with a tell: the evaluation hasn’t been clean. Grant “needs to get some steady shots at playing tackle,” Carroll said, after “bouncing around the tight end spots.”
That’s the intersection of hope and reality. Development isn’t just guys “feeling” it—it’s the staff showing it with defined roles, steady reps and decisions that look like a plan, not a weekly shuffle born out of necessity.
Then Carroll delivered the line that will land hardest with Raider Nation: “There’s nothing more important in the world than to win a game in this division. Hasn’t happened for a while.” He added, “I’d love to have a locker room where we can have a blast.”
Pete Carroll summed it up perfectly…
The division is the standard. The drought is the verdict. And “a blast” is what you say when you know the week-to-week product hasn’t earned the usual language of pride.
Carroll also said he still loves the work—”I love being on the field… I love the strategy part of ”it”—and that the “curiosity” of finding “the next right call” still drives him.
The Raiders do not need a coach who enjoys the puzzle. They need a staff and a roster that solve it. If the organization wants fans to buy “progress,” it has to look like more than late-season confidence and a hopeful locker room. It has to look like wins—especially in the AFC West.
*Top Photo: Getty Images