Pete Carroll is the NFL’s latest one-and-done coach.
The Las Vegas Raiders on Monday fired Carroll after posting a 3-14 record that tied for the league’s worst in his lone season at the helm, marking the latest reset for a franchise that now will be in search of its fourth full-time hire for the role since 2022.
‘The Las Vegas Raiders have relieved Pete Carroll of his duties as head coach. We appreciate and wish him and his family all the best,’ the team said in a statement. ‘Moving forward, General Manager John Spytek will lead all football operations in close collaboration with Tom Brady, including the search for the club’s next coach. Together, they will guide football decisions with a shared focus on leadership, culture, and alignment with the organization’s long-term vision and goals.’
After a season-ending win against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday, Carroll said he hoped to remain with the team and was not contemplating retirement, as some reports had suggested.
“Nobody is talking to me about that,” he said. “I haven’t said a word about that.”
Carroll, who at 74 became the oldest coach in modern NFL history, arrived in Las Vegas last January as the replacement for Antonio Pierce, who also only lasted one season as the organization’s full-time headcoach. The former Seattle Seahawks coach, who spent a year away from coaching after his surprising ouster at the end of the 2023 season, was brought in alongside Spytek to revitalize an organization that stumbled to a four-win season the previous year.
Carroll vowed to ‘build this football team up around the quarterback position,’ and the organization quickly identified an answer behind center with a trade for Geno Smith, the former Seahawks signal-caller who earned Comeback Player of the Year during his tenure with the coach. Drafting running back Ashton Jeanty with the No. 6 overall pick heightened expectations that the Raiders’ new-look backfield would ignite a rapid turnaround.
Instead, Las Vegas was plagued by familiar problems. Smith led the NFL with 17 interceptions, and a rushing offense that ranked as by far the NFL’s worst in 2024 ended up with a lower per-game output on the ground this season.
The team fired Chip Kelly, whom the organization reportedly made the NFL’s highest-paid offensive coordinator, after 11 weeks.
Star defensive end Maxx Crosby was held out of the final two games due to a knee injury, which prompted the five-time Pro Bowler to leave the facility when informed of the team’s decision not to play him down the stretch.
Carroll, who had never won fewer than six games in his previous 18 seasons in the pros, acknowledged multiple times during the season he was taken aback by how difficult the task at hand was.
‘It blows me away that this is the situation that we’re in, because I have no space in my brain for this,’ Carroll said in late December. ‘But maybe it had to be this hard.’
The Raiders will enter the offseason not only with a new-look coaching staff but also considerable resources. With an estimated $100.8 million in cap space, according to Over The Cap, Las Vegas will trail only the Tennessee Titans and Los Angeles Chargers in their spending capacity. With the No. 1 overall pick, the team could target a potential replacement for Smith at quarterback or a key figure elsewhere to fast-track yet another rebuild.
