Some people are fans of the Las Vegas Raiders. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Las Vegas Raiders. This 2025 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: Las Vegas, nee Oakland, nee Los Angeles, nee Oakland Raiders.
Your 2024 record: 4-13, the first time in their history that this is their final record, although in fairness the boys have had six other four-win seasons in the last 22 years, all of them in the 16-game era. They do four wins the way Derrick Henry converts third-and-2. But that's history, and history is particularly cruel to the Raiders in this century—which is to say they have lost 100 more games since 2003 than they have won—and therefore a cheap forfeit. What made 2024 a little more Raidery than usual was a 10-game losing streak starting in Week 5, one of the 50 longest losing streaks in the league's 105-year history.
The season began with a positively brilliant 26-23 win in Baltimore in Week 2 in which Vegas rallied from 23-13 down with 12 minutes left and kicked the winning field goal after a 24-yard shanked punt by Baltimore's Jordan Stout. Antonio Pierce was finally the coach who could deliver the tough love required to inspire the long-dispirited lads, and Gardner Minshew was the quarterback to make the Raiders respectable again. You can see how this story unravels from that sentence itself.
Pierce survived the season, which is more than can be said for offensive coordinator Luke Getsy, who was cacked in the bye week after the losing streak hit five. The Raiders gained 228 yards in Week 8 and 217 in Week 9, allowing Pierce the cover to fire Getsy, four weeks after he had already demoted Minshew and two weeks after he had restored Minshew to replace the injured Aidan O'Connell. None of the 10 consecutive losses were particularly memorable, to be fair, but they all had the same general theme—an average defense noteworthy mostly for Maxx Crosby and a terrible offense noteworthy for tight end Brock Bowers and almost literally nothing else. They were 27th in yards, 29th in points, dead last in rushing, 29th in drive average, third in turnovers, and tied for 30th in turnover differential. When they had the ball, they had it only briefly and largely ineffectively.
Unlike the Giants, Titans, Browns (whom the Raiders beat 20-16 in Week 4), Patriots, and Jaguars (whom the Raiders beat 19-14 in Week 16), who have already been covered by Comrade Magary, Keeper Of The Sucks, and Comrade Kalaf, America's Last Pats fan, the Raiders were bland and featureless throughout—just a week in, week out bummer. Their time as a well-recognized league icon has surely faded as crummy year piles atop crummy year, to the point where the Raiders have become the reverse Washington Generals—the designated road team while at home. And because they are the Raiders, they don't aggressively stink at home, and therefore disappoint the fans in their stadium because the vast majority of fans at Allegiant Stadium are rooting for the road team.
Your coach: Unbelievably, except that it's the Raiders we're talking about here, it's Pete Carroll, who is the oldest man ever (73) to be hired to coach an NFL team by design; Romeo Crennel was 73 when he replaced Bill O'Brien in Houston five years ago, but he is America's Interim Coach and almost shouldn't count. Carroll's M.O. is that of the effervescently positive motivator who could sell a cat to a bird, but he is also the guy who seemed to stay too long at the fair in Seattle. New general manager John Spytek came in with Carroll, which means that he's not the one who came up with the Carroll idea. That should work well. Then again, the Raiders have averaged a new general manager AND a coach every two years since Mark Davis succeeded his father, so if it doesn't work out, well, 2027 is right around the corner.
Carroll has been brought in to repair the general malaise that is Raider football. Crosby for one has expressed dismay about the constant turmoil above the player level, and even with his new contract he surely knows that his first 100 games as a Raider have been pretty much a brag for him but a drag for the team. That generally ages poorly, and whatever Carroll's contemporary football expertise might be, he is mostly there to make the locker room a happier and less angsty place on the theory that a happy Raider is a winning Raider—a largely unproven theory in this century.
Your quarterback: Geno Smith, largely on the say-so of Carroll, who helped resurrect his career in Seattle. In three years, he brushed off the stain of being a Jet, but somehow didn't meet Mike Macdonald's standards and decided to seek out happiness in the place least qualified to provide it. That should tell you something, but because the Raiders are our subject, it will tell it to you before they figure it out. Smith will be 35 in October, so his chances of starting every game must be considered long-ish, which is why O'Connell and Desmond Ridder are there as backups. O'Connell is starting his third year in Vegas even though he seems like he's been there for 15 years; that, too, is part of the Raider experience.
Whoever it is, the offense is designed to be ground-bound. First-round draft pick Ashton Jeanty, who gained 493,388 yards at Boise State, is going to be worked hard in Carroll's offense, and the best receiver is Bowers, who is the newest best tight end in the game. This should minimize the perils for Smith, but is not likely to make the Raiders the dynamic new toy in the shop, no matter what you think of the wide receiver corps of Jakobi Meyers, Tre Tucker, and Dont'e Thornton. Imagine Carroll fantasizing about Marshawn Lynch, with dreams of running Jeanty on second-and-1from the other team's one-yard line instead of what he did in 2015.
What's new that sucks: Safety Jamal Adams has been reacquired to bring back the good old days, if you consider his time with the Jets the good days. He had three big seasons in New York, came to Seattle, and got hurt a lot. He's barely played the last three seasons, so we don't even know if he sucks or is just unlucky. But as a 30-year-old addition in a wonky secondary, he feels like ... a 30-year-old addition in a wonky secondary. Judge for yourselves (as though we needed to tell you that), but this has reach written all over it.
What has always sucked: Are you kidding? Did you forget which team we're talking about here? These are the win totals in reverse order going back to 2003: 4, 8, 6, 10, 8, 7, 4, 6, 12, 7, 3, 4, 4, 8, 8, 5, 5, 4, 2, 4, 5, 4. And these are the playoff totals: None, none, none, one loss, none, none, none, none, one loss, none, none, none, none, none, none, none, none, none, none, none, none, none. No team has played fewer postseason games in that stretch, and the Browns have been in existence the entire time.
Also, defensive lineman Christian Wilkins's Jones fracture that caused him to miss most of last season has turned him into the latest in a staggeringly long line of free-agent failures in all three cities. The Raiders released him and are trying to void the last three guaranteed years in his deal, which most people don't think they'll be able to do, and now there is this Schefty report about him kissing a teammate on top of the head that said teammate found offensive, thus turning a regular old story about medical differences into something Raider-level bizarre. Whether Wilkins gets the money and the Raiders are embarrassed, or he doesn't get the money and the Raiders are embarrassed, the on-the-ground effect is that Crosby is robbed yet again of a useful teammate along the defensive line and may become the first defensive player since Reggie White to be quintuple-teamed on a regular basis. Let us remember that this is the team that managed not to benefit from signing Randy Moss, so the Wilkins saga just reminds us that in Vegas, no good idea goes realized and no bad idea goes unpunished.
What might not suck: Carroll, if all the Raiders need is an attitude adjustment. Spytek, if he can make a roster in two years, which is about the outer edge of Davis's patience. And Jeanty, if the offensive line that is largely intact from last year, albeit with a few position swaps, can learn to run block. Also, Raheem Mostert is under contract to spell Jeanty, so maybe the Raiders can go from being a mediocre passing team with a terrible running game to a mediocre passing team with a mediocre running game. No sense in getting too giddy with these lads, as you well know. They are who they are, and the fan base long should have abandoned them for their own mental health.
HEAR IT FROM RAIDERS FANS!
Josh:
Native New Yorker who became a Raiders fan after watching them beat the crap out of Washington in the Super Bowl and thinking “Hey those guys are good and have cool uniforms!” (I was six.) I could have followed the family and become a Giants fan and enjoy the memories of four titles. But noooooooooo…I had to stick with this 1970s cosplaying “franchise” through two relocations from/to cities I have never lived.
Bill Callahan is the worst head coach to ever make a Super Bowl. “Chucky” Gruden can go chase his destiny as the second coming of Tommy Tuberville. I am as certain they will screw up Maxx Crosby’s career as I am this team will always, always, always try and live off the Madden glory years. I am irrationally excited for a season of normalcy with Pete Carroll spewing RFK Jr-like takes on vaccines.
Still love the uniforms.
Tarek:
43 years of being a fan of a team that is all the way across the country from me. They have made the playoffs 12 times in those 43 years!!!!
Since I turned 30 they have only made the playoffs 2 times (both 1 and done) in 22 years!
I'm a jackass for still rooting for this team each year and I deserve all the pain!
Kyle:
Derek Carr is easily the best QB we've had in 20 years.
Ash:
I'm from Australia. I had no connection to the Raiders or any reason to adopt this team as a 10 year old kid except for being off sick from school one day, channel surfing and catching a game where one of the team's wore black and had a logo I'd seen on one of the Metallica guys' guitars at some point. That was enough for me and I became a Raider fan. In my defence, this was the early 00s so it was a good idea at the time.
I could fill you in on the pain and misery of waking up at 3-5am every Monday morning for the past however many years to inevitably see my team lose and be in a shit mood for the rest of the day but I'll skip that whining and take you forward to last year when me and a mate planned a short trip to the States. He's a Broncos fan and wanted to go see Denver v Jets at Metlife. It wouldn't have been my first choice for my NFL virginity because fuck the Broncos but beggars can't be choosers, we got pretty good tickets but anyone who hasn't struck the game from their memory would remember the rain pissing down, the awful awful game quality, QAaron Rodgers looking washed and yes, Bo Nix making a couple throws that won them the game and set them on track to make the playoffs.
So to recap, my first ever live NFL game involved my most hated team winning, lots of rain and again the fuckin Broncos winning.
What does this have to do with the Raiders? FUCK THE BRONCOS and fuck me is why.
Colby:
You hear it, don’t you? The Siren call of competence emitting from Las Vegas.
Pete Carroll is here, we finally have a functional adult in charge.
Holy shit Ashton Jeanty might be a god.
Brock Bowers is sculpted out of granite and runs like a gazelle, he might wind up the best tight end in the history of the sport.
You know you shouldn’t fall for it. You know that this is the year Geno Smith reverts back to his Jets days, that the secondary is already mostly theoretical, that life is pain and the Raiders are the avatar for whatever deity you pissed off in a past life jamming a scalpel into your scrotum for 17 Sundays each year.
Like Odysseus, I shall once more be lashed to the mast and screaming at my comrades to let me loose so I may join the Sirens. And all the sensible people will plug their ears with wax and pay me no never mind at all.
Robert:
I am as excited as I’ve been about the Raiders in probably a decade. Is it because of Geno Smith? No. Is it because they now have the early 2000s Pac 10/12 coaching brain-trust of Chip Kelly and Pete Carroll? LOL also no. Is it because of Ashton Jeanty? Closer. But really it’s this video/fit. That’s it. That’s all it took.
Conor:
Thanks as always for this - the series always brightens up my July.
I'll tell you something about being a British Raiders fan. It fucking sucks.
It sucks staying up until after midnight to watch us get battered. It sucks that all my NFL-watching friends are glory hunters supporting teams like the Chiefs or the Eagles or the Ravens. It sucks that they're even more of a punchline than my beloved Scotland rugby team.
But a couple of months ago, I had a moment of sheer joy as a Raiders fan. I came over to the States to see some friends and spend a few days watching the draft with them. It was an amazing time. Come draft night, I was praying for us to take Jeanty. I was so overjoyed when we picked him.
Immediately after it was announced, carried away by emotion, I decided to fulfil my punishment from our fantasy league last year: downing a double shot of Everclear. As it burned through my throat and destroyed my ability to speak, I had a moment of searing clarity.
This was the happiest the Raiders had ever made me.
Chris:
I’m from Oakland and still resent the Raiders for leaving. Since I live in New York now I decided to give one of those teams a chance and see how it works out, only to discover that both are just the Raiders for people who think they could have been Tony Soprano in another life but are scared to go to the city outside of work hours. Needless to say I’ve gone back to the Raider Nation. At least our fail son owner has a funny haircut.
Tyler:
There is no good reason for me to be a Raider fan. I grew up in a small, rural, Appalachian town whose claims to fame are being the birthplace of Mountain Dew and an oddly named state park. Oakland, LA, Oakland again, and Las Vegas couldn’t be further away geographically or culturally from where I was from, but my dad passed this curse onto me at birth and instead of shedding the silver and black when I was old enough to know better instead I leaned in and embraced the misery.
2016 was a shit year for me. My grandpa died on my birthday. A few months later Donald Trump won the presidency for the first time. Then in early December my mom unexpectedly passed away. All in all, I was not having a good time! There was a bright spot though, Derek Carr looked like an MVP candidate, Khalil Mack was on track to win DPOY, and the Raiders had put together their best season in 14 years, sitting at 11-3 with two games left.
Then Derek Carr broke his leg during a garbage time drive.
But hey! They made the playoffs! And since they lost the last game of the season, they were going to face the Texans in Houston a few hours away from Austin where I moved after college! Hell yeah!
We drove to Houston to witness Connor Cook (in his only career start and final NFL appearance!) vs. Brock Osweiler in what is widely considered the worst playoff matchup in NFL history. I had a better time at my mom’s funeral.
Fuck Jon Gruden with a Spider Y 2 Banana.
Alexander:
I've been clean off the Raiders for 7 years since they fired a decent GM, drafted a rapist in the first round & skipped town like a bank robber. And yet one good offseason & I'm already eyeing Ashton Jeanty too early in fantasy mock drafts. Can't wait for the inevitable 5-12.
I had the misfortune of driving by the new stadium at night recently. A giant, obsidian anus prolapsing out of the desert with a painful combination of too-dark glass & too-bright LED lights. In a city that defies natural law by its very existence, and also has a golden Trump monstrosity in it, it's impressive to build an affront to both god & man so grotesque none other compares.
Want to be part of Defector’s NFL previews? It’s simple: just email us here and tell us why your team sucks. Next up: New York Jets.
