Just win, baby?
That’s exactly what Pete Carroll is planning on doing in his first year with the Raiders, making a bold pronouncement when asked what constitutes success in 2025 during his Tuesday press conference to open training camp.
“We’re going to win a ton. We’re going to win a bunch of games,” Carroll said, via video from the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “I can’t even imagine anything [else]. I’ve been winning 10 games a year for 20 years or something, you know? What are my expectations? We’re going to win a bunch. And I don’t care who hears that — it doesn’t matter to me. It ain’t about what anybody hears, it’s about what we do.
“And so, that’s why expectations are really high. The standards need to be so that the expectations can be met. We’ll see what happens. I wish I could guarantee it to you, but I can’t even think of what else it could be but being really successful.”
Carroll had already noted earlier in the presser that his expectations are “about as high as they can get.”
“There is no limit. We’re going for it. We’re going to see how far we can take our club. We’re going to do it one step at a time. We’re just going to see how good we can be,” Carroll said, later adding, “The expectations and the standards we are setting are going to be as high as we can make them. That’s how we’ve always done that. So, we’re going to take it as far as we can as quickly as we can, see what that means.”
Carroll may have understated the length of his ability to win 10 games a year as a head coach, too. After going 6-6 in his first season as USC’s head coach in 2001, Carroll’s USC teams won at least 11 games every year from 2002-2008.
Once he became the Seahawks head coach in 2010, Seattle went 7-9 two years in a row — famously winning a playoff game as NFC West champion in Carroll’s first year — but then won at least 10 games from 2012-2016 and from 2018-2020. The team barely missed out on that mark in 2017, winning nine games. Carroll’s Seahawks then won seven in 2021, and nine in 2022 and 2023.
Since falling to the Buccaneers in Super Bowl XXXVII to cap the 2002 season, the Raiders have been to the playoffs just twice — losing in the wild card round both times. Those are the only two times since 2002 that the club has finished with at least 10 wins.
It seems like a tall task for Las Vegas to reach that double-digit wins mark in 2025, especially considering that the AFC West’s other three teams all reached the postseason in 2024. But Carroll’s coaching should give the Raiders as good a shot as any to be a high-quality, competitive team in the coming season.
