Practically from the start of the 2025 NFL season, the plan for the Las Vegas Raiders' starting offensive line felt wrong. Players were moved to positions they hadn't played before, or moved off of their best position. In one case, someone was left to compete with an inferior player for far too long.
While head coach Pete Carroll offered all the lame-sounding public comments about the arrangement of the offensive line, the root of the failure sat with the offensive line coach, Brennan Carroll. That's right, the head coach's eldest son, who somehow kept his job all season.
Now that Pete Carroll has been fired, the Raiders' new head coach will bring in his own coaching staff, presumably one with no nepotistic ties, fostering a more objective approach to who is hired or saving someone's job if things don't go well.
Raiders now have the perfect replacement for Brennan Carroll
Whoever the new Raiders' head coach is, they will have some good options to pick from for their offensive line coach. That hire will be tasked with fixing a unit that left running back Ashton Jeanty dodging defenders the moment he got the ball, and made life incredibly tough on the quarterback.
As new coaching staffs are shaped around the league, people will become available. On that front, as expected, new New York Giants head coach John Harbaugh is not retaining most of the previous staff. The familiar name there for Raider Nation is Carmen Bricillo, who will not be back for the Giants.
Before his two seasons as the Giants' offensive line coach, he held that title for two years under Josh McDaniels and Antonio Pierce with the Raiders. He had followed McDaniels from the New England Patriots, where he was the co-offensive line coach in 2020 and the offensive line coach in 2021.
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In 2022, the Raiders were top-10 in the league in yards per carry, and Josh Jacobs won the rushing title with 1,653 yards. Over the final four games of the 2023 season, with Jacobs out, Bricillo's unit paved the way for Zamir White to have what now looks like a major anomaly as the Raiders' lead back.
White ran 84 times for 397 yards, which is 4.7 yards per carry, and has never sniffed that success without Bricillo. The Raiders also finished each of Bricillo's two seasons as offensive line coach among the 12 best teams in sacks allowed.
Bricillo doesn't have any obvious ties to anyone who remains out there as a head coaching candidate for the Raiders. But as whoever is hired hunts for an offensive line coach, bringing him back to Las Vegas to put that unit back in order should absolutely be on the radar.