The results of the 2025 NFL season are still very much an open wound for the Las Vegas Raiders. As much as the fanbase and those in the organization probably want to look forward and forget about the atrocities, I'm reminded of the words from a poster on my seventh-grade history teacher's wall:
"How can we know where we're going if we don't know where we've been?"
It is paramount that the Silver and Black learn from their past; otherwise, they are destined to repeat it. Yes, firing Pete Carroll is a big part of that, and so is replacing him with Klint Kubiak. Mark Davis fully handing football ops over to John Spytek and Tom Brady with no strings attached is huge as well.
But things don't just need to change in title or theory; they need to change in practice. And that starts with accountability. Brady, who has taken on a larger role with the franchise this offseason, which has included mentoring Fernando Mendoza in any way he can, is holding people accountable publicly.
Tom Brady thinks everyone was to blame for Las Vegas Raiders' 2025 failures
In a recent appearance on the Stick to Football Podcast, Brady was asked about the expectations for the Raiders during the 2026 NFL season. But before he got too deep into it, the legendary quarterback touched on what went wrong last year. Brady knows the importance of history.
"I would expect a lot of improvement from where it's been," Brady said. "Last year, we just underperformed in every area, and it's everybody's fault. That's the reality. There's nobody who did a good job. There's not one player in the organization. There's not anybody involved that did the job to the level that needs to be done at, and everybody needs to improve. And it starts with me, and it filters down to the rest of the players on the field. And they got to go out there, and ultimately they got to perform at a high level."
Good. Don't pull any punches.
Now, some players did some very good things in Las Vegas last year. Eric Stokes had a breakout campaign, Ashton Jeanty and Tre Tucker did the best they could, given their situations, Jeremy Chinn was solid, and Brock Bowers and Maxx Crosby are, well, Brock Bowers and Maxx Crosby.
Can anybody really argue with Brady, though? Were any of these players' contributions enough to turn the tide for the team? Were any of them the best in the league at their position all year? Did they stay healthy? This is all part of what it takes to be great. And Brady won't settle for good.
When asked to hone in on what the Silver and Black could accomplish this season in terms of wins and losses or a playoff appearance, Brady wouldn't take the bait. He knows this is a rebuild, and there is exactly one thing that he wants to see, and he keeps harping on it:
"A massive improvement. And I would expect daily improvement. And I'd expect hourly improvement. Yes, I really would," Brady stated. "Every day that goes by, when you're on a good team, every day and every week goes by, you should be better. Like, a good team should be better at the end of the season than the beginning of the season. Or you're not a good team, right? If you have more time together and more practice and you're getting worse, something's wrong. If you have more time, more practice, you should be getting better."
To me, this was pretty profound. Obviously, any team's opponents are practicing every day as well, and wins are hard to come by in the NFL. But the Raiders undoubtedly got worse and less cohesive as the year went on, so no other conclusion exists than that something was severely wrong.
Las Vegas seems sure that Carroll and his crew of coaches and former Seattle Seahawks players were at the forefront of that, and with Kubiak and Co. in town with a much-improved roster on paper, the Silver and Black should have a much more successful campaign. It certainly looks that way.
However, as Brady said, it will take constant improvement from everyone in the locker room. Not a day should go by that the Raiders aren't attacking anything they can to make this a better football team. They don't have the privilege of sitting around and hoping that someone else can do the job for them.
Brady, thankfully, isn't pulling any punches about the team's recent failures. And if he and Spytek truly are the heads of the snake, then Las Vegas is in a good spot. Accountability needed to be had, and the Raiders have to learn from the brutal reality that was the 2025 season. It starts at the top.
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