The Las Vegas Raiders have now filled the two key positions at the top of the organization by hiring John Spytek as General Manager and Pete Carroll as Head Coach. The pair represent a great combination of youthful exuberance and experience with the 44-year-old Spytek taking on his first GM role and the 74-year-old Carroll who will be heading into his 19th season as a head coach.
Carroll is an incredibly accomplished coach with more division titles in 14 years with the Seahawks than the Raiders have had since the year 2000. He has experience in building a program from the ground up and will bring his relentless energy and gravitas to a team that badly needs both.
Carroll’s Seattle teams were known for their defense and he ran a unit that finished 11th or better in 9 seasons, a feat the Raiders have managed just once in the last 20 years. We know that he likes to build his defenses from the secondary down and was the architect of the famous “Legion of Boom” defense that terrorized the NFL for all those years and led Seattle to two Super Bowl appearances.
Spytek and the Tampa front office emphasized defense as well and have had units ranging from dominant to competent in his time there. With what we know about their combined approach to the game we head into the first mock draft of the Spytek-Carroll era with an eye for explosive talent and defense.