Former Seahawks coach Pete Carroll fired by Raiders

Pete Carroll’s return to the NFL lasted all of one miserable season in Sin City.

The former Seahawks head coach was fired on Monday morning after one season in charge of the Las Vegas Raiders, in which the hope that he could turn around the franchise flopped into the worst season of his NFL coaching career.

The Raiders announced on Twitter that they are moving on from Carroll after just one season.

The Raiders finished 3-14 and “earned” the right to select No. 1 overall in next April’s draft. But the season was a complete failure that left Raiders owner Mark Davis little choice but to hit the reset button yet again for a franchise that has badly faltered in recent seasons.

The 74-year-old Carroll returned to the NFL with much fanfare after spending the 2024 season out of the league following his separation from the Seahawks. Carroll taught a class at USC, showed up at college practices and ultimately missed the chance of leading an NFL franchise.

Carroll is clearly the one taking the fall for disfunction that went beyond just the head coach. Each of the last three coaching staffs hired in Las Vegas have lasted less than two seasons. General manager John Spytek was retained and in his announcement of Carroll’s dismissal, Davis said minority owner Tom Brady would be working in close collaboration on the decisions around the next head coach of the Raiders.

Carroll’s return started great with a win over New England in Week 1. And that was the high point of the entire campaign. The Raiders lost 10 of their final 11 games before beating Kansas City in the season finale on Sunday. They fired offensive coordinator Chip Kelly and special teams coordinator Tom McMahon during the season.

The defense was bad. The offense was awful. The special teams were shaky. Las Vegas was last in the league in points scored, 25th in points allowed and were outscored by 191 points over the course of the season.

Asked about his status after beating the Chiefs on Sunday, Carroll said he wanted to return and continue trying to rebuild the Raiders. Davis and Brady clearly thought otherwise.

Carroll’s biggest mistake may have been tying the franchise to quarterback Geno Smith, who regressed badly after being traded from Seattle to Las Vegas. Smith missed two games because of injury, but still threw a league-leading 17 interceptions, saw his completion percentage dip and looked more like the QB from his first couple of seasons in New York than what he displayed during his three seasons as a starter with the Seahawks.

Carroll had never lost more than 10 games in any season as a head coach before this season. It’s the second time he’s been fired after one season as a head coach — he was let go following his first season in charge of the Jets in 1994.

His time with the Seahawks was the most successful of his NFL career with 137 regular season wins, four division titles, two Super Bowl appearances and the only championship in franchise history. His split from the Seahawks came after the 2023 season after three straight seasons where they didn’t win more than nine games and missed the playoffs in two of those three years.

It was clear then on the day of his separation from the Seahawks after 14 seasons that Carroll still wanted to coach and would eventually be seeking another opportunity. But his return with the Raiders was a dispiriting postscript to what otherwise was a mostly stellar coaching career.

This story will be updated.