Broken Chip

A $6 Million Experiment Gone Wrong

Kelly was hired in February to revamp the Raiders’ offense under head coach Pete Carroll, fresh off a one-year stint as Ohio State’s OC.

The front office didn’t just bring him in they backed up the Brinks truck.

• Kelly was made the highest-paid coordinator in the NFL, at $6 million per year over three seasons, per The Athletic’s Ted Nguyen.

• On the 2025 Raiders offense, only three players made more money than their offensive coordinator.

The return on that investment?
An offense that ranked:

• 30th in success rate

• Dead last in EPA/play

…per Ben Baldwin’s database.

For a franchise already dealing with a thin roster and injury issues, the margin for error was tiny. Kelly torched that margin.

“Plays That Weren’t Even in the Game Plan”

The most damning part of the reporting isn’t just that the offense was bad it’s how it was bad.

Per Pelissero, Kelly:

• Called plays that weren’t installed in the offense or in that week’s game plan

• Frequently failed to tag motions for wide receivers, leaving QB Geno Smith with incomplete information at the line

• Created confusion that bled into protections, spacing, and timing, stalling drives before they started

In today’s NFL, where pre-snap motion and formation detail are core to almost every high-level offense, that kind of sloppiness is fatal.

You could see it on Sundays: Miscommunications, late snaps, wasted timeouts, receivers looking back mid-route to locate the ball or clarify assignments. It didn’t look like a unit that lacked talent as much as one that lacked cohesion and clarity.

Fallout for Pete Carroll and the Raiders’ Offense

Fair or not, this becomes a brutal look for the Raiders’ front office and coaching infrastructure:

• They hired Kelly,

• Made him the highest-paid coordinator in the league,

• Watched him oversee one of the NFL’s worst offenses through 11 games on a 2–9 team.

Head coach Pete Carroll now has to clean this up on the fly with Olson calling plays and an offense that’s already taken a beating physically and statistically.

Guard Dylan Parham has been battling through injury as arguably the Raiders’ best remaining lineman. The unit has been patched together, yet still asked to operate in a system that hasn’t functioned cleanly all year.

What’s Next: Olson, Geno, and a Broken Unit

With Greg Olson stepping in, the immediate goal isn’t to suddenly become explosive it’s to be competent:

• Get the right plays in on time

• Run what’s actually installed

• Simplify reads for Geno Smith

• Lean on rhythm, quick game, and the run to settle the group down

The Raiders don’t have the luxury of tossing this season entirely. There are evaluations to make:

• Is Geno the guy in 2026?

• Who on this offense can function in a clean structure when the chaos is removed?

• Which young players respond now that the noise in their headset is gone?

The Los Angeles Chargers are up next, and while their season has had its own issues, they still boast enough pass rush talent to wreck games if protection and timing slip.