The Las Vegas Raiders' offensive line has been an issue throughout the 2025 NFL season. Despite having the same five starting players from last year's squad, who were arguably above average, this unit has somehow turned into one of the worst groups in the league.
Yes, they have been tested by injuries, most notably to Kolton Miller, but ahead of the Raiders' Monday Night Football matchup with the Dallas Cowboys, star right guard Jackson Powers-Johnson also headed to Injured Reserve. This left Las Vegas with a big decision to make.
Veteran Alex Cappa has been Powers-Johnson's replacement all season, but given the state of the team, it would have behooved the Raiders to give a young player like Caleb Rogers a chance. After all, they spent a third-round pick on him in April, and he has yet to be active for a game this season.
But the Raiders defied logic by not only not starting Rogers, but not even making him active. Then, they chose to keep Cappa on the bench in favor of Will Putnam, who slid to center after being the backup left guard during the last two games, while Jordan Meredith moved to right guard.
Pete Carroll's explanation for Raiders' OL switcharoo almost made it worse
Rogers told reporters last week that he was starting, so Raider Nation was a bit confused. They also didn't even know that this combination was an option, as they figured that the competition would be centered around the guard spot. But the Raiders chose to make two changes instead of one.
When asked about his decision during the post-game press conference, Carroll provided the best answer that he could after a downright embarrassing performance by the offensive line, especially on the interior, where he made the changes. But his reasoning almost made things worse.
"The competition during the time this week and what's been happening the last two weeks, we've been looking at it. We tried (different) combinations. We looked at all of it and felt like that was the best way we could go," Carroll said. "Jordan had a really solid season at guard last year, and he felt really comfortable moving. We tried Caleb, you guys were following that, and we looked at some different combinations, and this was the best way we thought to do it."
If that was the coaching staff's perception of the best way to do things, they should not be touching this team's personnel with a 10-foot pole. Geno Smith got sacked four times, annihilated a handful of other times, and Ashton Jeanty ran for 7 yards on 6 carries, four of which went for negative yardage.
Clearly, this was not the best way to do things, as this was the offensive line's worst game in a season full of poor showings. Sometimes a coaching staff takes a gamble, and it doesn't work out. But this was always an ill-advised bet, and Carroll made no in-game adjustments to mitigate the disaster.
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Carroll also talked about the general scope of the offensive line, and while he probably felt that these comments would take some of the heat off of him, they actually made him and his decision-making look even worse.
"There is a lot of guys that did play last year on this team in the offense. It's pretty much the same group up front. With the guys that are banged up, not so, but until this past week without Kolton, we have the guys that we've had," Carroll said. "We're hoping that they're going to continue to grow and grow together. There's some youth in there, and some inexperience that we're dealing with and trying to figure out how to bring our guys along. We would love to see Caleb play, and we would love to see Charles [Grant] play, but it hasn't happened that way. They've got to show it in practice and show us that they're ready. We're not ignoring it at all."
Well, if Carroll wants to clarify that these are the same players on the offensive line as last year, he needs to have an answer for why they got dramatically worse. There's an obvious one, but neither he nor his son would like it. Plus, it is literally Carroll's choice to play young players like Rogers and Grant.
This offseason, the Carrolls took a perfectly good and young offensive line and made unnecessary changes. That is where this catastrophe up front began. One of his first decrees as coach was to completely switch around the interior so that nobody was playing where they thrived last year.
To put a bow on things, it is almost laughable that it took Powers-Johnson getting hurt to make a change at center. All season, fans have been clamoring for the team to put him back at center, and now that he's hurt, suddenly, Meredith going back to guard is not such a bad idea to improve things.
It is a slap in the face to Raider Nation, and a slap in the face to the guys in the locker room. Carroll and Co. were evidently willing to try every combination possible with Powers-Johnson now sidelined, but amid the team's struggles throughout the year, they never considered mixing things up.
Monday's game was a prime opportunity to get the team's young players involved, and although Carroll admitted that he is not trying to help build things for the future, his plan to "win now" isn't exactly working either.
This cataclysmic error was just the latest poor decision made by the coaching staff, one that couldn't even be explained away when the dust had settled on the game. Accountability needs to be had in Las Vegas, and it starts at the top.