As Pete Carroll assembled his initial Las Vegas Raiders coaching staff, the hiring of Chip Kelly as offensive coordinator seemed odd. The type of offense Carroll favors, for better or worse, simply did not seem to align with Kelly's history.
Before Kelly was fired after Week 12's loss to the Cleveland Browns, there were signs of a strained relationship between him and Carroll. Reports have indicated that Kelly was a hire driven by minority owner Tom Brady, as if the offensive coordinator choice was completely out of Carroll's hands.
Whatever faults Carroll has had this season, and there have been many, Kelly being hoisted onto him to run the Raiders' offense was a setup for failure. And failure, unsurprisingly, is what occurred. Then came the "he said-he said," using national reporters as the vessels, about why things went awry.
Pete Carroll-Chip Kelly dynamic that doomed the Raiders has roots elsewhere
On a recent episode of the Locked on Raiders Squad Show podcast, Raider Nation Radio host Q Myers talked about the power structure in the organization as it related to Kelly.
"I didn’t think his boss was ever Pete Carroll,” Myers said. "When a guy that’s supposedly underneath one guy and he’s actually not underneath him, it’s hard to establish who’s calling what. So when Chip Kelly got fired, I think it surprised all of us only because I thought he answered to Tom Brady, where Pete Carroll answered to Mark Davis. I didn’t see that dynamic really being the way that it should have been.”
High-functioning NFL franchises have a clear separation between ownership and football people. Brady certainly straddles that line in the Raiders' organization. His involvement in hiring a head coach or general manager is fine, and his input regarding player acquisitions has a place as well.
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But if Brady went over Carroll's head to spearhead the hiring of Kelly as the offensive coordinator, that's a step way too far that should be beyond his realm as a minority owner. And if Kelly was answering to Brady over anyone else, including Carroll, that's a whole other issue.
Myers' thoughts bring us back toward the core issue that the Raiders have, which is not going away anytime soon.
Mark Davis invited the "cool kid" into the organization at what's been rumored to be a discounted rate for that level of ownership stake. And with that, Brady has seemingly been given leeway, along with a level of influence, a minority owner doesn't usually have.