It's easy to point the finger at quarterback Geno Smith amid the Las Vegas Raiders' offensive struggles. In fact, you should, because he's playing a terrible brand of quarterback.
Through five games, Smith leads the NFL in interceptions with nine, and he hasn't played particularly well even when he isn't giving the ball to the other team.
But if you're expecting head coach Pete Carroll to lay a lot of blame at the feet of his $75 million quarterback, don't hold your breath.
When asked about how to make things easier for Smith, Carroll talked the run game, but he also appeared to throw offensive coordinator Chip Kelly under the bus after mentioning how Las Vegas needs to do a better job with its play-calling.
Here's the full quote, courtesy of Jesse Merrick of the Silver & Black Sports Network:
“We've gotta run the football better, and more, and we're going to continue to work at it and see if we can continue to bring it to life." he said. "The running game has looked well... we need to get more of it. That's part of it. That's just mixing football. That's how you do it. We don't want to ever rely on the quarterback to do the whole show and sit in shotgun and throw the football. Never coach that way."
"And then, we've gotta make sure we're calling all the best stuff in the situations," he added. "(Smith is) not calling the plays. We've gotta call them and we've gotta make sure to get him in the right spots and give him the best chance to stay out of harm's way."
The problem with that logic is that play-calling isn't going to solve Smith putting the ball in harm's way, something we've seen him do far too often this season. There's nothing Kelly can do to prevent that.
Now, this is not to say Kelly doesn't deserve blame, because the play-caller always deserves at least some blame when an offense is struggling. But Smith simply needs to make better decisions, too.
Take one of his interceptions against the Colts, for example.
Smith threw the ball when not one but two Colts defenders were clearly in position to make a play before Smith cut it loose. There is no amount of play-calling capable of fixing that kind of terrible throw.
And that's just one of the egregious picks Geno has thrown this season. If you have watched Raiders games in 2025, you know there are more.
As far as Kelly is concerned, there are some around the league who believe he "isn't creating enough advantages to overcome the Raiders' personnel deficiencies," ESPN's Dan Graziano reported.
"What I'm hearing from a lot from people around the league is that offensive coordinator Chip Kelly's scheme isn't creating enough advantages to overcome the Raiders' personnel deficiencies, and there's no margin for error if Smith keeps turning the ball over as much as he has," Graziano wrote on Wednesday.
The ineptitude we're seeing on offense in Las Vegas is just a perfect storm of issues.
Smith is careless with the football, the Raiders lack sufficient personnel with their young and inexperienced group of pass-catchers — and that's especially true with Brock Bowers sidelined — and Kelly simply isn't doing a good enough job to overcome the ills of his quarterback and pass-catchers.
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