The Las Vegas Raiders have been a mixed bag thus far during the 2025 NFL season. On opening weekend, they looked like a much-improved team, taking it to the New England Patriots on the road. Then in Week 2, they looked like the same old Raiders, crumbling at home against the LA Chargers.
Week 3 will provide a unique challenge for the Raiders, as they travel back to the East Coast on a short week for a matchup with the Washington Commanders. While this is a team that improved a bit from last year's NFC Championship Game run, they'll be without star quarterback Jayden Daniels.
Playing backups has caused problems for Las Vegas before, so this is a trap that Pete Carroll and his team will need to avoid. Plus, this game is personal on several levels, as Carroll is facing his old apprentice, Dan Quinn, and the Raiders get another crack at Marcus Mariota and Von Miller.
Raiders' Jeremy Chinn and Kyu Blu Kelly have revenge game in Week 3
But there are actually two key starters on the Raiders' defense who may have a bone to pick with the Commanders: safety Jeremy Chinn and cornerback Kyu Blu Kelly. While they only intersected for a few months in Washington, neither player was brought back by the current regime there.
Kelly was claimed off waivers at the end of the 2023 NFL season under the leadership of Ron Rivera and Martin Mayhew. However, despite staying on the offseason roster, he was a casualty of roster cutdowns before the 2024 season when Quinn and Adam Peters took over.
Of course, that led Kelly back to a bigger role in Las Vegas, the town he grew up in, no less, so neither he nor Raider Nation is too upset at how this worked out. But there is still an extra charge there for Kelly, who was essentially told that he was not good enough by this team just over a year ago.
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Chinn signed with the Commanders in free agency before last season and was a key cog on a defense that surprised a lot of people. He was also a pivotal part of the team's playoff upset against the Detroit Lions, as he had the game-sealing interception of Jared Goff.
This offseason, however, Chinn was not re-signed by the Commanders, as they felt he was not even worth an average annual value of just over $8 million. To make matters worse, yet sweeter for him, is that Washington's starting safety duo has been abysmal so far this season.
Both Chinn and Kelly have been stalwarts on the Las Vegas defense in 2025, as the former has played every defensive snap, and the latter has played all but one. As long as they don't play outside of themselves and use this revenge game to fuel them, fans should expect two big performances on Sunday.