The Las Vegas Raiders have found their head coach that they believe will bring this team back to contention in former Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll. Carroll, along with new general manager John Spytek and minority owner Tom Brady, will all be working together this offseason to build this roster up, and the most important question remains what will the team do about the quarterback position.
You can not win in the NFL without having the right man under center, and the Raiders simply do not have their guy at this time. Neither Gardner Minshew nor Aidan O’Connell proved to be the right person last season. But Carroll knows that is a top priority and is glad to have Brady in his corner.
At his introductory press conference Carroll spoke about the goal for the Raiders being to. build around the quarterback position and how he plans on leaning on Brady’s expertise to get the right guy, via Nick Shook of NFL.com:
“I would add to that that it’s our mission to build this football team up around the quarterback position,” Carroll said. “We happen to have the greatest of all time to help us, and to see clearly, and we’re going to lean on Tom as much as we possibly can for his insights because nobody has the insights he has. He’s that unique. But the quarterback position is one of the positions on the team, and we’ve got to make it all fit together well.”
Carroll would continue on, noting the success he’s had with his quarterbacks at both the NFL and collegiate level,s and is ready to embrace the challenge ahead of him:
“I’ve had pretty good success with my quarterback in the past, going all the way back to college days and they’ve all turned out to be really extraordinary members of our club. There’s a way to embrace the challenge that the quarterback has from the rest of the football team as well. We need to support our guy, and we need to do what we can to make that work. It’s really about making a great football team around the quarterback position.”
Carroll’s success can’t be argued. Not only did he win a Super Bowl with Russell Wilson in Seattle, but he also completely revived Geno Smith’s career in his final years with the Seahawks. Additionally, he had two Heisman Trophy-winning quarterbacks at USC in Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart.
As long as Carroll, Brady and Spytek are on the same page and find the right person to put under center, there is a lot of confidence in Carroll’s abilities to bring out the most success possible for this Raiders team.
Russell Wilson always intrigued by the idea of joining Raiders
One potential option for the Raiders at quarterback could be a familiar face to Pete Carroll in Russell Wilson, who is a free agent after one season with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
A recent report noted that Carroll could reach out to his former quarterback, noting that the two have already begun patching up their relationship and that Wilson has always been intrigued by the idea of joining the Raiders franchise.