When Pete Carroll was hired by the Seattle Seahawks in 2010, his first loss was against the Denver Broncos. When he won Seattle’s first Super Bowl in the 2013 season, his legendary team defeated the record-breaking Broncos and crushed Peyton Manning. When Russell Wilson was traded to the Broncos in 2022, Pete’s first post-Wilson win memorably came on opening night against Denver.
In 2025, Pete Carroll’s 11th loss of a miserable Las Vegas Raiders season came against…the Denver Broncos.
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Yes, the Raiders had no chance of beating the Broncos and the game was not as close as the 24-17 score suggests. Denver was up 24-7 with a few minutes left, Kenny Pickett (who replaced an injured Geno Smith in the fourth quarter) threw a touchdown with a couple minutes left, then the fun really began if you had…extra interest in this one.
For some reason, Denver safety Brandon Jones committed a silly delay of play penalty on a play that would have pushed the clock to 0:00. The penalty gave the Raiders the ball in long field goal range with :05 remaining, which is the usual time running out on a long field goal attempt. From 46 meters, Daniel Carlson’s kick was good and, as expected, time expired.
At 2-11, this is the confirmed worst season of Carroll’s distinguished coaching career. He had never lost more than 10 in his worst years in the NFL and was used to winning 10 games in college. As things stand, the Raiders have the second overall pick in the draft and have a real shot at number one thanks to the Tennessee Titans and New Orleans Saints winning.
But why was this Carlson field goal a “bad hit”? Well, if you know your bets, the Raiders were down 10 and overall closed as 7.5 to 8.5 point underdogs. Carlson’s kick was the difference between the Raiders covering the spread or not, and this was like a Scooby Doo trap door leading to the back door for bad beats. I’ll spare you the caustic social media conspiracy theories.
Carroll was not asked about this decision in the postgame press conference. There was literally zero chance of victory at this point, but I guess you still have to “always compete”.
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The Raiders have the Philadelphia Eagles, Houston Texans, New York Giants and Kansas City Chiefs to close the season. That could be 2-15 and the worst season in franchise history, with the Giants serving as an interesting “tank-off” matchup in Week 17.
As I said a few weeks ago, maybe this is a Tom Flores in reverse. When the Seahawks hired Tom Flores to replace Chuck Knox, he was a Super Bowl champion with the Raiders and a complete disaster in Seattle (and he got three years!). Carroll won one Super Bowl with the Seahawks, led them to another, and has been a complete disaster in Las Vegas. If you don’t like Carroll, you might enjoy it, but otherwise this has been one hell of a season when you consider the alternative was simply not coaching again after narrowly missing the playoffs in his final season with the Seahawks.
Maybe there’s still an honorary position/job title for Pete in Seattle, because it’s impossible to justify a second go-round in Vegas.