Busters for Raiders 2025 season

5 days ago 1

The hardest part about the Busters this season was finding who to blame when everything seems to go wrong. It certainly led to a few instances of there being no Ballers. In fact, I can honestly say in the 17 years I've been writing this series, I've never had as many weeks without a Baller.

But the Busters were ever-present. Sometimes the list was long, and sometimes it was simply a matter of putting more blame on those who were in charge of the mess. Speaking of which...

Busters

HC Pete Carroll

Looking back, it's hard to believe anyone thought the team he was putting on the field was going to compete simply because of Carroll's track record. But his hiring was widely celebrated as a solid move as were his moves to retain Patrick Graham as DC and bring in Chip Kelly as OC. It was Carroll's other decisions that would destroy all of that.

First and foremost, it was hiring his son Brennan Carroll to be the team's offensive line coach. The offensive line was completely lost all season long. Making it hard sometimes to know when it was individual player issues or just a lack of proper coaching or scheme implementation. But one thing is for certain -- everyone was worse for it. The proven talents were not playing up to their abilities and the unproven talent looked downright terrible.

It was also decisions he made along the OL that were baffling. Paying Alex Cappa $5 million only to then move starting center Jackson Powers-Johnson over to right guard, benching Cappa, and starting former starting right guard Jordan Meredith at center. It all seemed to hinge upon their physical builds. But the move made both positions worse.

As a result, top pick running back Ashton Jeanty was routinely met by defenders in the backfield or hitting brick walls at the line of scrimmage. Every yard he got, he had to fight 2-3 yards for it.

Then there was the matter of Carroll meddling with Chip Kelly's offensive scheme. Kelly was fresh off helping navigate the Ohio State offense to a National Championship and was made the highest paid OC in the NFL at $16 million per season. Only for Carroll to apparently decide he wanted Kelly to run the offense differently. Obviously it was a disaster. And the result was Kelly getting fired while Pete's son kept his job while the players on offense were forced to try and coach themselves because he either didn't do it or had no idea what he was doing.

QB Geno Smith

The QB Carroll brought over in a trade with the Seahawks. You know, the same Seahawks team that's now the Super Bowl favorite after moving on from Smith in favor of Sam Darnold? If Smith were even serviceable, it would suggest that maybe he was just not the caliber of QB they needed to get to the next level. But the way he played this season suggests he was a big part of what was keeping them down.

Smith led the NFL with 17 interceptions. And his 84.7 passer rating was 23rd among qualified starters. He was named a Buster nine times and was twice a Top Buster. And along the way, Smith literally flipped of the fans in Vegas, started stonewalling the media, and is said to have wiped his social media of anything regarding the Raiders immediatlye after the season ended. Not the level of maturity you expect from a 35-year-old NFL quarterback.

RT DJ Glaze, LT Stone Forsythe

Ten times Glaze was named a Buster. Three times a Top Buster. He gave up ten sacks on the season. Meanwhile Forsythe gave up 11 sacks in just 13 starts. Kolton Miller's return next season will resolve the issue on the left side. The right side might be more complicated being that great options rarely reach free agency and they have to use their first round pick on a quarterback.

OL Jordan Meredith

Anyone who watched him last season would have said he was better suited to play guard. But the crack father and son Carroll team saw it differently. And in the name of competition, they swapped Meredith and Rimington Award winning center Jackson Powers-Johnson. Both struggled, but Meredith would regularly get steam rolled by nose tackles, making him look completely out of his depth at the center spot. The result was seven times being named a Buster and a Top Buster three times.

S Lonnie Johnson Jr

Perhaps no newcomer was more talked up than Lonnie Johnson Jr. The career journeyman special teamer was finally getting his shot to be a key part of a defense. Then when he got his shot, what we saw was the very reason he had not received that shot before. Dude can't tackle to save his life.

Johnson was a missed tackle machine, leading a great many big plays and being named a Buster four times and a Top Buster once despite only seeing over 50% of the defensive snaps five times. Safe to say this Pete Carroll experiment was a failure.

DE Malcolm Koonce

His eight sacks in the final nine games of the 2023 season is seeming like a distant memory now. He missed all of last season with an injury he sustained just prior to the season opener and was given a one-year $12 million deal to see if he could return to that form. He did not.

Koonce was relegated to situational pass rusher and in most cases, his presence was not felt. There were three instances in which he didn't record a single stat. He is headed for free agency again, and it's probably best to just let him go.

WR Dont'e Thornton

The team's fourth round pick, he made a lot of headlines for his highlight catches in training camp. Then we saw how hard it is to make such catches in actual games with defenders actually gameplanning. Thornton showed all the issues that caused him to fall to the fourth round despite his supreme physical gifts. He does not seem to 'get' route running or one of many other skills a receiver must have to beat NFL defenders. He would routinely be in the wrong place or when he was, he would have the defender easily stay with him because he is not deceptive in his movement. He's got a long way to go if he is ever going to have NFL success or have a QB trust him.