When 74-year-old Pete Carroll came in as the Las Vegas Raiders' head coach in 2025, a natural priority was going to be placed on veteran players. The oldest head coach in NFL history did not want to rebuild, even if that would have better served the situation in Las Vegas.
Mix Carroll's bend toward veterans with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers roots of new general manager John Spytek and minority owner Tom Brady, and you get the Raiders signing veteran guard Alex Cappa to a two-year, $11.02 million deal.
Cappa was installed as the starter at right guard, for better or worse, and to be dethroned by no one unless or until it became too obvious to ignore. He didn't even last to Week 1, and it took Jackson Powers-Johnson being injured for him to start games in Week 2 and Week 3.
After that, Cappa played 14 offensive snaps over the next five games. Powers-Johnson's season-ending injury led to 39 snaps at right guard for him in Week 10, before a shift to center from Week 12 through the end of the season, with six starts there. However, it clearly wasn't enough.
Former Las Vegas Raiders IOL Alex Cappa just might be done in the NFL
All told, Cappa made eight starts last season and played a noticeable number of snaps in two other games. Since center is where he saw the most work, that's where Pro Football Focus positioned him for their grades.
He was 35th in overall grade out of 37 qualifying centers, and he needed top-notch pass blocking grades in Week 17 and Week 18 to avoid being a bottom-five center in both run and pass-blocking.
Cappa only played center last season because the Raiders had no other options, and he was at least a healthy body. Even with a staff that favored veterans, Cappa couldn't carve out a role, at least not one Carroll was willing to give him in good conscience. And Cappa's ineptitude was not new in 2025.
Playing for the Cincinnati Bengals in 2024, he was PFF's 71st-graded guard out of 77 qualifiers. It should have been telling that the offensive line-inept Bengals willingly let him go, but "hey, he won a Super Bowl blocking for Brady in 2020, so let's sign him," seemed to be the sentiment.
Cappa was an unsurprising cut for the Raiders this offseason, and he didn't even make it to the new league year still on the roster. Though it didn't work out at all in Las Vegas, the 31-year-old seems to have some time left in his career. At least one would think.
Raiders fans probably don't care enough about Cappa to notice if he signed with a new team this offseason. But fear not, as ESPN's Ryan McFadden reminds us in a look at how the roster has changed this offseason that he has not signed anywhere as the start of NFL training camps looms.
While it has been proven foolish to still regard him as a preferred starter, Cappa could land somewhere as a veteran backup before the season. On other hand, two years of lackluster tape, paired with abysmal data, seems to suggest he's done after eight seasons and $37.9 million in career earnings.
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