Pete Carroll was clearly not the first choice to be the Las Vegas Raiders' head coach this time last year. But no one could have envisioned things going as badly as they did during the 2025 NFL season. After posting a 3-14 record, Carroll was, as expected, one-and-done.
So, the Raiders are once again back in the market for a head coach. Had they been able to fully implement their since-revealed plan for who they were willing to promise the job to after Carroll, that would've circumvented the league's interviewing rules and invited allegations of a sham search.
Sometimes, however, things just work out how they are supposed to. The Raiders need to approach their search for Carroll's replacement with the cleanest of clean slates. No succession promises, no preconceived candidates. Tabula rasa.
Coaching candidate tabbed as fit for the Raiders will draw ire from fans
As the NFL coaching carousel starts to spin, Alex Kay of Bleacher Report matched a potential candidate with each of the six head coach openings at the time of his publishing the article.
Some of the candidates Kay matched with jobs are easy to tie to the Raiders as an ideal fit: Klint Kubiak, Brian Flores, and Kevin Stefanski. But he went another direction with his match for the Silver and Black, starting with a reference to the aforementioned succession plan.
"It was just over a year ago that the Las Vegas Raiders envisioned going on a run of success with Pete Carroll at the helm before handing the reins over to Robert Saleh, the man they hoped would become their defensive coordinator and 'coach in waiting'
"While Carroll did become Vegas' head coach for the 2025 season—a brutal 3-14 one-and-done campaign—Saleh spurned the organization and elected to return to his former post as the defensive coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers."
RELATED: 10 Raiders players who definitely won't be back after disastrous 2025
Saleh's three-plus-season run as the New York Jets' head coach was obviously not very successful, with a 20-36 record. But that dysfunctional organization hasn't set anyone up to succeed in a long time, and they're 6-23 since firing him after five games in 2024.
If Saleh ever gets a second chance to be a head coach, he can take the lessons that he learned from that experience in New York with him to his next opportunity. It also wouldn't be the first time a head coach failed the first time around, then had success in his second shot at it.
Someone is bound to find out, at some point, if Saleh can do it too.
Any time a defensive-minded head coach is hired, or a candidate along that line is even interviewed for an opening, fans will automatically not be impressed. But Raiders' fans should be open to all options right now, and set aside whatever ire they have for Saleh in particular.