The Las Vegas Raiders brought in Pete Carroll and Geno Smith effectively as a package deal this offseason. Raider Nation felt that these two were upgrades over Antonio Pierce and the trio of quarterbacks that they had last year, so things couldn't possibly be worse. Well, they have been.
Although they are just 2-10 for the second straight campaign, the vibe around this team is much worse than it was a year ago, and the future is somehow bleaker. To make matters worse, Carroll's blind loyalty to Smith has aggravated the fan base, and potentially the other players on the team.
There is no way that a coach can honestly assess this Raiders roster and conclude that Smith is the best option at quarterback. That should ruffle feathers in the locker room. Carroll's blind loyalty to his longtime signal-caller, as he is seemingly set to die on the Geno Smith hill, may ultimately do him in.
Geno Smith and Pete Carroll sure are happy about Raiders following the analytics
Almost nothing has gone right in Las Vegas this season, and Carroll is seemingly resistant to change. But, according to Computer Cowboy, the team ranks near the top of the NFL in terms of accurately following what the analytics say they should do in given situations. A silver lining!
When asked about this during Wednesday's press conference, and how the coach has adapted over the years from simply going with his gut, Carroll went on about how proud he is of the process, and he singled out his son, Nate Carroll, the assistant quarterbacks coach and game manager.
"It definitely has over the years, and it helps to have somebody that you know has a good feel for that. Nate's really good at doing that. He handles that in connection with the coaches," Carroll said. "They're involved in it, but yet they don't have the say, but we take their input when we can. But that's how we work it out, and we feel pretty clean. I didn't know we were where we were, but I know we're very comfortable with the process and the situations. We've been through a million of them."
Sure, the Raiders make the right call on fourth down. But it can be said with certainty that the Raiders tend to just go for it on fourth down more than the average team simply because they are always in four-down territory in the fourth quarter, as they commonly trail by two or more scores. Analytics!
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Another interesting component of this notion is that, yes, Las Vegas may be trudging down the analytically-friendly path. But the Raiders haven't exactly been successful in doing so. They are currently ranked 31st in the NFL with a 38.1% conversion rate on fourth down. What an advantage.
Smith was also asked about this later in the same press conference, but the reporter wanted to know what it meant to have a coach who believed in him enough to make some gutsy calls. Smith took the answer in an interesting direction.
"That's coach man. Coach is a Hall of Famer, one of the best coaches all time. I think he knows what he's doing. I know he knows what he's doing," Smith said. "He's done it for a long time; a lot longer than I have, a lot longer than I've been living. He understands the game completely, in its entirety, and he usually makes the right decisions. No one's perfect, but I think for the most part, he's got a really good handle on things."
Raider Nation wishes this were true. It's in poor taste for the quarterback to go on about what a legendary coach is at the helm and how he "usually makes the right decisions" and has got a "really good handle on things" when the team is 2-10 and unlikely to eclipse three wins on the year.
Victories have been hard to come by this year in Las Vegas, and in a way, fans can hardly blame Carroll and Smith for latching on to the one bit of positivity that this season has brought. On the other hand, it's a ridiculous victory lap to take in an abysmal campaign where analytics clearly haven't helped.