The headlines surrounding the Las Vegas Raiders over the last week or so have primarily been about former offensive coordinator Chip Kelly. He was fired after Week 12's game against the Cleveland Browns, and it seems like there has been plenty of fallout from that announcement.
While various reports indicated that Kelly's offense was a complete disaster because of Kelly himself, others said that head coach Pete Carroll had way too much control over the unit, not allowing the team's offensive coordinator any freedom, and often getting in the way.
At the end of the day, however, Raider Nation doesn't care where the blame truly belongs. It is semantics. They want results. Interim offensive coordinator Greg Olson had a chance to prove himself on Sunday against the Los Angeles Chargers, but it's already becoming clear that Kelly was not the only issue.
Raiders struggle under Greg Olson in first game after firing Chip kelly
Of course, everyone expected the Raiders to get throttled by their AFC West foe anyway, but fans wanted to see improvement on offense. However, they scored just 14 points, below their season average of 15.0, which ranked dead-last in the NFL before Week 13.
The offense also managed just 12 first downs against Los Angeles, their third-lowest mark of the season, and their 156 yards of offense were second-worst to the 95 yards they mustered in the 31-0 blowout they suffered in Week 7 against the Kansas City Chiefs.
These struggles come as no surprise. Kelly, of course, is not absolved of blame for the Raiders' offensive ineptitude this season. But there are far too many people to point the finger at in Las Vegas for the franchise to single out one person and strip them of their duties.
Carroll, of course, remained painfully optimistic in the aftermath of yet another deflating loss and a pitiful offensive effort against the Chargers. He spoke to the media after the game and defended the team's poor offensive showing.
"Offensively, to have an expectation that we're going to flip-flop and all a sudden be ripping. We would like to have seen that, but that didn't happen, and we're a ways away," Carroll said. "Everybody communicated really well. We have no problem functioning and all that, and in a couple days time, that's a nice accomplishment by those guys. But we'll get a lot better. "
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Obviously, nobody expected this offense to all of a sudden be firing on all cylinders. They expected things to at least look a little bit better, or the same, but definitely not worse than they were. The same issues that plagued the team under Kelly's play-calling are plaguing the team under Olson.
Calling the unit "a ways away" after Week 13 is just painful for the fan base to hear. Calling the team's poor showing "an accomplishment" is also in poor taste. The standards have seemingly never been lower in Las Vegas, and a promising future has never felt so far away.
Yet, Carroll doubled down on his praise of Olson during Monday's press conference. After looking at the film, apparently, Carroll still felt good about the product on the field on Sunday, and he even threw a bit of shade at Kelly in the process.
"We're going to move in a good direction here. It was really drinking from the fire hose last week. It was as hard as it could get for those guys to get set up and get rolling," Carroll said. "I hope that we'll make some good improvement here. The processing during the week was much more like the one that we want. Communication for the players and to the coaches was good, and we'll see if we can't just build on that."
Raider Nation understands that the process is important and that so much goes on behind the scenes that they don't know about. But at the end of the day, the results are all that really matter, and they weren't there under Kelly, and they're still not there under Olson.
Las Vegas should not have fired their offensive coordinator in what Carroll believes is a "win-now" season if they didn't feel like they had an adequate upgrade already on the staff who was immediately ready to transform the group.
Carroll knows a lot more about football than anyone supporting the Raiders, but he can't pull the wool over the eyes of the fan base. The offense was just as bad on Sunday as it had been all season, and perhaps worse, and no amount of explaining that away will help his case.
It's time for Carroll to start looking in the mirror and recognizing his share of the blame when it comes to the team's offensive issues. His hand-picked quarterback, his two sons leading the Raiders' two worst units, and his own power struggle for control over the offense would be a good place to start.