With new coaching staffs for the Patriots and Raiders, Sunday’s regular-season opener at Gillette Stadium is filled with unknowns.
New England will play its first game that counts in the head coach Mike Vrabel era. The team identity under Vrabel is not a mystery, as the head coach has made his “effort and finish” mantra known throughout the summer: “build a team, compete for a role and prepare to win,” Vrabel often says are the pillars of his football program and coaching philosophy. However, the coaching staff led by Vrabel, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, and defensive coordinator Terrell Williams has yet to game-plan an opponent together. They’ve also been holding certain cards close to their chests in terms of schematic wrinkles during the preseason.
The same applies to the visiting Las Vegas Raiders under first-year head coach Pete Carroll. After being let go by Seattle following the 2023 season, Carroll is back in the head coach’s office following a gap year as a senior advisor to new Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald. The 73-year-old Carroll is the oldest head coach in the NFL, but the endless energy and enthusiasm that he brings to the sideline are still omnipresent. With 18 years of experience as a head coach, including three seasons as Patriots head coach from 1997-1999, Carroll’s coaching style isn’t a mystery, but this Raiders regime is still fresh.
Following a successful few years at the helm, Vegas retained defensive coordinator Patrick Graham, a Bill Belichick disciple who typically calls an aggressive man-blitz defense. That said, Carroll, who has a defensive background, still has his fingerprints on the Raiders defense, while Chip Kelly is returning to the pro game for the first time in nearly a decade as Vegas’s offensive coordinator.
After stints with the Eagles and 49ers in the early 2010s, Kelly returned to college football, where he most recently directed the Ohio State offense in their national championship season a year ago. Kelly is now bringing his offense back to the NFL for the first time since 2016 as the Raiders offensive coordinator under Carroll. Kelly has evolved as a schemer to run a more pro-style system, so we might not see the warp-speed, spread-to-run system that he ran during his Oregon heyday, where Kelly pioneered offensive philosophy in the college ranks.
“[The Raiders] have a first-year defensive coach with a coordinator that’s been there and done stuff, and then they have a new offensive coordinator who’s been in the NFL and has also come from The Ohio State University. That’s pretty unique,” Vrabel said this week. “Just trying to get themes and concepts and ideas of what they may want to do defensively with Pat [Patrick Graham] and Pete’s style and scheme, and then what they may want to do offensively from what Chip [Kelly]’s done in the past in the NFL, from what he’s done in college, [and] what Geno likes.”
Given that new coaching staffs on both sides have evolved schematically through trials and tribulations, Sunday’s regular-season opener is a mystery box. These coaches have staple plays and core philosophies, but until the game declares, there’s an unknown element to both the Patriots and the Raiders. As a result, Sunday’s game comes down to two things: executing your base stuff and in-game adjustments. Eventually, the two staff’s will get a feel for what the opponent is doing, so whoever can adjust on the fly the best will likely win the chess match.
Let’s get into the X’s and O’s of Sunday’s regular-season opener for the Patriots vs. the Raiders at Gillette Stadium with kickoff at 1 p.m. ET.
Patriots Offense vs. Raiders Defense: Will Vegas’s Defense Take After Carroll or Graham?
Carroll and the Raiders are airing on the side of continuity by retaining defensive coordinator Patrick Graham, who was initially hired by then-Raiders head coach and current Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels back in the 2022 season.
Before leaving to further his career on the defensive coordinator track, Graham cut his teeth at the NFL level as a defensive assistant for the Patriots (2009-15). Graham’s defenses have historically played a good amount of man coverage. Last season, Vegas led the league by playing cover zero on 10 percent of their defensive snaps and ranked sixth in simulated pressure rate (2.5%). Simulated pressures are when the defense threatens a blitz with five or more rushers near the line of scrimmage but only rushes four defenders after the snap to confuse the pass protection. Graham successfully generated pressure with scheme, tying for fifth in unblocked pressure rate last season (8.1%).
However, Carroll’s roots as a defensive mind are in the Seattle-3 system, with four-man fronts and cover three structures being his base defense. In the preseason, the Raiders played a league-high 57.9% of their coverage snaps in cover three, and their tape was filled with Seattle staples from traditional over fronts to the different coverage calls. With that said, you can’t look too much into the preseason. The Raiders were vanilla in exhibition games, and although there are Seattle imprints, Vegas has clearly stated that Graham is calling the defense. From this perspective, the expectation is that Vegas will combine Graham’s third-down pressure packages with Carroll’s early down zone coverages.
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