So let's investigate the blood-spattered scene of the crime, and by crime we mean the inevitable firing of Raiders offensive coordinator Chip Kelly, for which the word crime is probably misplaced.
We know the why, but what about the when? Did Pete Carroll decide to do it at halftime of the Raiders' latest failure against the equally failure-adept Cleveland Browns, when the Pirates With The Swords Through Their Heads were already losing 14-3 and quarterback Geno Smith had been sacked five times? Did it come after the first possession of the second half when the only plays in Cleveland territory were two more sacks and a run for zero yards? Did it come immediately after the game ended, a 24-10 loss that was significantly grimmer than anyone could have imagined even though the two teams entered the game with a combined record of 4-16?
And when did Carroll tell Kelly? When the coaches' elevator emptied? When he got to the locker room? After his shower? On his drive home? Inquiring minds, both of them, want to know.
It plainly was both a deed of premeditation and passion. Firing a coach in-season is not unusual; firing one so soon after a game is. And announcing it in a press release within four hours of game's end is, well, quite the gesture, especially when you consider that Kelly's contract still had another 40 games and $13 million to run.
Carroll's public image is that of a happy-talk guy, a players’ coach who seeks to motivate through bubblegum-powered positivity, but having taken on the job of supervising this misery farm, he has already fired two coaches in-season (special teams coordinator Tom McMahon got the box three weeks ago after a 10-7 loss to the Broncos), and would seem to be nobody to cross for the final six games of this this hellish year, five of them against winning teams.
Kelly, though, was particularly ungood. The Raiders are—well, let's just keep it simple; the offense is ranked 30th or worse in damned near everything, and in a just world they would have been relegated by now. Smith has been sacked 41 times so far and is on pace to be the oldest quarterback ever to be sacked 60 times in a season. Yesterday's 10 was a season-high, the 13th time this century that a defense found the opponents' backfield so commodious.
Thus, we can only imagine Carroll's level of incandescence when he made sure to get the PR department to drop its whiskey sours and get a statement out within four hours of game's end. He not only wanted Kelly gone, he wanted the world to know it. He fired Kelly as quickly and loudly as it can be done. Elsewhere, this might be thought of as Shedeur Sanders's breakout game (a generous interpretation, but a win is win, especially when it's a Cleveland Browns win), but Carroll had his own point to make, and he didn't want to think about it, or let it simmer overnight, or let cooler heads prevail.
We can all be cavalier about coaching jobs and how quickly and cruelly they disappear, but most of the time it's less bloody than this. It happens the next day, with a podium, and a sad-looking general manager regretting the events that made such a day necessary and wishing the not-very-dearly-departed much success in his or her next endeavor. It's the opposite of grace under fire, of course; it's manufactured grace while firing. But it's the dance everyone does, the dance their predecessors have done for decades. We wish you a good life and career, just not here.
Carroll's mindset, though, was fury-driven, and screw the niceties. He'd been complaining about the offense in pressers since Game 2 (a 20-9 loss to the Chargers), and as is clear it has gotten no better. Ashton Jeanty has not developed as a running back, the offensive line has been shambolic since, and maybe even before, left tackle Kolton Miller got hurt, and Smith has been wearing large malevolent mesomorphs on his face and chest all year. The only case Kelly could make in rebuttal is that he should have gotten that one extra night before the "come see me as soon as you get into the office" call. Instead: "Don't come see me, and you don't have an office anymore."
In more normal circumstances, this would reek of a head coach trying to cover his own heated seater. But such is the gravitational pull of Raiders football. They have lost three of every five games they have played since they left Los Angeles in 1995, three out of every five games since Al Davis died in 2011, and three out of every five games since they moved to Las Vegas in 2021. If Kelly has a defense, it is that time-honored, earrings-on-a-pig argument that you can only make out loud if you want the people who fired you to withhold your severance checks: He went to work for the Raiders. How did anyone think it was going to go?
