From a sheer football perspective, the Las Vegas Raiders hiring Pete Carroll as their new head coach made perfect sense.
There was no denying that Carroll brought winning pedigree to the Raiders, which is something the team has needed for a long time. However, one of the faults that Carroll had towards the end of his run with the Seattle Seahawks was his tendency to call a conservative gameplan, even as analytics began to change the way coaches thought about the game. Even as the NFL grew more pass-happy and coaches became more aggressive on fourth down, Carroll and the Seahawks never seemed to get with the program, which played a role in the coach’s ouster after the 2023 season.
Now back on the sidelines with the Raiders, Carroll’s stance on analytics has changed considerably.
Carroll’s admission, as well as front office moves made by the Raiders, suggest a different approach for the veteran head coach.
When Carroll was officially introduced as the new head coach of the Raiders in February, he made it clear that analytics was one of the things he took the time to get acclimated to during his year-long sabbatical from the NFL.
“There’s patterns to the game that I (began to see) differently,” Carroll said, per The Athletic’s Tashan Reed. “A lot of it was the analytic outlook of it. When you’re in the midst of all of these seasons and every week, as you’re just so frantically going about planning for the next game, you don’t get the chance to have that perspective and slow your mind down.”
The Raiders investing as they have in analytics suggest that Carroll’s comments are not just empty words, but a reflection of an organization-wide commitment to evolving the way they see football.
New general manager John Spytek used analytics heavily during his time with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and his restructuring of the front office cemented that he would use a similar approach. Not only did Spytek retain members of the Raiders’ pre-existing analytical staff, but he hired senior vice president of football operations Mark Thewes in February. Thewes was familiar with Spytek from their shared time with the Denver Broncos, and he had previously overseen their analytics department before joining the Raiders.
Carroll has made the commitment to blending analytics with his old-school thinking, and Thewes has explained that the veteran head coach has been very receptive towards adopting a new-age approach.
“He’s totally receptive,” Thewes said in May, per Reed. “He challenges us to come up with new ways to challenge his ways of thinking. … We’re trying to organize the data in a way that is supportive to the decision-making process.”
With Carroll embracing analytics, it is exciting to see how he will evolve as the game around him continues to do so.
