The Las Vegas Raiders are working to build a contender in the desert. After stringing together disappointing seasons, the franchise responded by bringing the winningest football player of all time, Tom Brady, into the fold, with him being officially ratified as a member of the ownership group.
Brady then helped the team bring in another football legend who knows a thing or two about winning championships. Las Vegas hired Pete Carroll as the team’s next head coach, and the move is already paying major dividends.
Carroll’s hire attracted Chip Kelly to become the team’s next offensive coordinator, after leading the Ohio State Buckeyes to the college football national championship in the same role.
In a Wednesday news conference, Kelly spoke about the chance to work with Carroll.
“I think everybody in the coaching profession, if you get a chance to work with Pete Carroll, you’re pretty excited about it,” Kelly said in the conference, according to the Athletic.
“Obviously, this is the highest league of football. The competition is at an all-time high,” Kelly said in the conference. “It’s that competition that drives you.
“And then talking with [General Manager] John Spytek and [team owner] Mark Davis and just where everybody is aligned in this organization and then getting a chance to talk to [minority owner] Tom Brady about what he feels he can help Pete and Mark with. I was just excited about that alignment of everybody.”
Kelly also discussed how his offenses have evolved since his infamous no-huddle days as the head coach of Oregon.
“It was drastically different from when I was a college coach at Oregon and we were trying to get as many snaps a game in as possible and run guys off the field. We’ve evolved that way just because I think the game itself has evolved. There’s a trend overall that the number of snaps both at the college and at the NFL level are down, so you have to adjust.”
Carroll will be the oldest head coach in NFL history, and Kelly may be putting himself in line to take over after Carroll, but he downplayed any such aspirations for the time being.
“I’m really excited to be here with Pete, and I think anybody that tries to look too far down the road is going to get run over. You better make sure that you concentrate on exactly what’s right in front of you. I don’t have to be a head coach again. That’s not something I need to do or a box I need to check. I just really enjoy coaching.
“I’m really not concerned [about it]. If I never coach again after this season, then I would have a life that I never dreamed I could ever have in football. I’m going to coach for a long, long time as long as someone will have me. Whether that’s as a position coach or as a head coach or as a coordinator, I’m not really caught up in that stuff.”
It’ll be interesting to see if Kelly and Carroll’s experience gets the Raiders competitive again in such a stacked division.
