The Las Vegas Raiders’ season continued to spiral out of control following another blowout loss, this time a 24-10 defeat to the lowly Cleveland Browns and rookie quarterback Shedeur Sanders making his first career start. And once again, the offense under Chip Kelly was a point of discussion after the game.
The Raiders failed to reach 300 yards for the sixth time in the last seven games, while also allowing 10 sacks on quarterback Geno Smith and committing 13 penalties as a team. Whether or not Kelly is the right person for the job has been questioned for weeks, but now the Raiders have made their decision.
The franchise fired Chip Kelly as their offensive coordinator, with head coach Pete Carroll informing Kelly of the Raiders’ decision after the game, via Ryan McFadden of ESPN:
“I spoke with Chip Kelly earlier this evening and informed him of his release as offensive coordinator of the Raiders,” first-year coach Pete Carroll said in a statement released by the team. “I would like to thank Chip for his service and wish him all the best in the future.”
The Raiders rank 31st in points scored and 30th in total yards this season, and some sort of change clearly needs to be made. For his part, Kelly had nothing bad to say about the Raiders organization, staff or players and understood that with all of these losses, someone was going to take the fall:
“I am grateful for the opportunity with the Raiders; bottom line in this league you have to win,” Kelly told NFL reporter Jay Glazer. “I really loved those players. I’m a huge, huge Geno Smith fan. That was one of the best parts of this experience for me, working with Geno and those guys every day.
“But hey, we got to win. I get it.”
The Raiders had much higher expectations than what they have shown this season. With young talents like Ashton Jeanty and Brock Bowers and a veteran quarterback in Geno Smith, they did not plan on being at the bottom of the league. But the team’s issues along the offensive line have greatly hampered things as well.
Carroll didn’t name a new offensive coordinator just yet, but whoever takes over the job still has a handful of games to start turning things around and build some momentum going into next season.
Raiders head coach Pete Carroll continues to defend QB Geno Smith
Something else that many have been calling for has been for the Raiders to bench QB Geno Smith, but head coach Pete Carroll remains a believer in Smith as he spoke about prior to Sunday’s game against the Browns.
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