The Las Vegas Raiders entered the 2025 campaign with a fair amount of optimism after what was a horrible 2024 season.
The "GOAT" Tom Brady was taking the reins as a minority owner and the team hired a proven winner in Pete Carroll and traded for what was supposed to be a massive upgrade at quarterback in Geno Smith.
However, nothing has gone right for Las Vegas through five games. Carroll and the Raiders' coaching staff have made some odd decisions, with the Jackson Powers-Johnson one topping the list, and Smith has been a turnover machine.
The result is the Raiders are sitting with a 1-4 record, which is actually worse than where the team was at through five games of 2024 (2-3) with Gardner Minshew and Aidan O'Connell throwing the football and Antonio Pierce at the helm.
If you think Carroll expected it to take this long to get the team back on track, you'd be wrong. Even the Raiders head coach is surprised at how bad his team has been early on this season.
"Yeah, yeah, much longer than I expected it to be," Carroll said of the Raiders' struggles. "We have to get out of that type of ball."
Carroll did offer an upbeat message amid the team's issues, although that's going to fall on deaf ears for a Raiders fan base that has seen this frustrating story before.
"I know that we're going to come together," Carroll added.
No amount of coming together is going to matter if Smith can't get his act together. He leads the NFL with nine interceptions and his play has been lackluster, to say the least, even when he isn't handing the ball to the other team.
The bottom line is that the Raiders are a mess and their decision to not blow it up in the offseason and start over is quickly proving to be a major blunder. Had they done that, a start like this wouldn't hurt as much.
Las Vegas can't make that same mistake twice and if the opportunity presents at the trade deadline to unload some pieces for picks to help kickstart a rebuild, general manager John Spytek needs to do it.
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