Now that Pete Carroll is officially the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, he has to turn his focus to staffing up. Carroll has been around football for over 50 years and has made a lot of connections along the way.
However, he made it clear in his introductory press conference that he's not opposed to retaining coaches from Antonio Pierce's staff. That turned out to be true as the first major coaching decision he made was to retain special teams coordinator Tom McMahon, per NFL Network's Tom Pelissero.
The #Raiders are retaining special teams coordinator Tom McMahon, per source. Some continuity on Pete Carroll’s staff.
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) January 29, 2025
McMahon is turning out to be quite the survivor. He was originally hired by Josh McDaniels and was retained under Pierce. Now he's sticking around under Carroll.
McMahon has consistently been a special teams coordinator since 2009 and the Raiders would be hard-pressed to find somebody with more experience. While Las Vegas doesn't do anything special on special teams, they've been a solid unit.
It helps that kicker Daniel Carlson and punter AJ Cole are All-Pros. The Raiders haven't returned a kick for a touchdown since 2011 so perhaps they could use more creativity in that aspect of the game but with McMahon, the Raiders know that can at least have a solid unit.
Carroll now needs to turn his attention to who his offensive and defensive coordinators will be. It'll also be interesting to see which coaches he might retain. Defensive line coach Rob Leonard appears to have a good shot to stay. Wide receivers coach Edgar Bennett has survived several head coaches now and could be back once again.
Carroll knows a lot of coaches so he's going to want to bring in some familiar faces and some fresh blood. It's hard to imagine too many holdovers from the Pierce days will be brought back but there are going to be a few retained.