Pete Carroll’s first season back in the NFL has not gone as he or the Las Vegas Raiders, the team he came out of retirement for, had hoped.
Now, the 2013 Super Bowl champion head coach faces scrutiny for his latest and most significant change to date.
Carroll decided to fire Raiders offensive coordinator Chip Kelly, who, like his boss, was in his first season with the organization. Kelly was also the highest-paid assistant at his position.
Now, in the aftermath of that decision and amid a 2-9 inaugural campaign, Carroll faces questions over his decision to fire Kelly, who may not have had the requisite autonomy to execute his vision for the Raiders’ offense.
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NFL.com’s Ian Rapoport published a report that noted evaluations of the Raiders’ offense lacked several critical elements traditionally associated with Kelly’s scheme during what the insider framed as a “disaster” of a tenure.
The question is whether that was Kelly’s doing or not.
Rapoport reported that many who “studied the offense” and “game-planned” for it do not believe that it was Kelly’s offense and that it was “unlike anything” he ran before.
“In fact, defensive coordinators likened the Raiders offense this season more to Shane Waldron’s offense with the Seahawks in 2023, Carroll’s last year with Seattle. Kelly’s trademark creative runs out of shotgun had been dramatically limited. Instead, the blend of Seattle and Las Vegas schemes tilted far more toward the under-center zone scheme Carroll favors,” Rapoport wrote on Saturday.
“One previous opponent even had their scout team prepare cards based on Seattle plays of the past under Carroll, sources say.”
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Rapoport also pointed to colleague Tom Pelissero’s report regarding the Raiders’ dysfunction.
“There were times, I was told, where Chip Kelly was repeatedly botching the play calls. Where he’s supposed to be, for instance, tagging a motion on a play, so the receiver’s on the left, not the right. He forgets to say it. So, Geno Smith is going to the line of scrimmage, and going, ‘This doesn’t look right,’ and they’re trying to run a play,” Pelissero told Rich Eisen on “The Rich Eisen Show” on Nov. 26.
“There’s times where Chip, I was told, on several occasions, called a play that was either not in the game plan or not installed at all. Things like that happen, you’re not productive. That’s enough. You don’t need any extra excuses.”
Sources also told Rapoport that “coaches were excited about the possibilities of Kelly’s gun-based offense, only to run basically none of it this season.”
Kelly also navigated a staff full of Carroll associates.
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