Chip Kelly only lasted 11 games with the Raiders, and most would agree that his three months as offensive coordinator in Las Vegas was as disappointing as any in recent memory.

In the wake of Kelly’s departure there has been no shortage of finger pointing around his time with the team, and one of the most aggressive reports came from NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, who said Pete Carroll essentially sabotaged Kelly’s offense by pushing a scheme similar to what the Seahawks ran with Carroll in 2023.

“Based on the views of those who studied the offense and based on those who game-planned against it this season, they don’t believe Kelly was running his own offense at all. It was unlike anything Kelly previously had run,” Rapoport reported in November.

“In fact, defensive coordinators likened the Raiders offense this season more to Shane Waldron’s offense with the Seahawks in 2023, Carroll’s last year with Seattle,” Rapoport continued. “Kelly’s trademark creative runs out of shotgun had been dramatically limited. Instead, the blend of Seattle and Las Vegas schemes tilted far more toward the under-center zone scheme Carroll favors.”

“One previous opponent even had their scout team prepare cards based on Seattle plays of the past under Carroll, sources say.”

But according to Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter, it was Kelly who dictated the offense in Las Vegas and apparently pivoted on a lot of what the team had been practicing in the offseason.

“I know definitively that Chip Kelly ran this offense. I know definitively that Pete Carroll was not Chip Kelly’s boss. I know that. That’s not an opinion,” Carpenter said on the Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast.

“Let me lay the gauntlet out. I know that factually and if certain people were to come out and say that Chip was not the boss, I would then reveal how I know. I’m just laying that gauntlet out there, okay? Because I’m not going to let people come out and rewrite history when they know that I know factually the truth. We’ll leave it there.”

Additionally, Carpenter said Carroll’s son, who has taken a lot of criticism for the way the offensive line played this year, wasn’t utilizing the run scheme he preferred, either.

“Everybody had a boss, including Brennan Carroll, Pete’s son, who took a lot of grief for the offensive line, which I understand the offensive line was bad,” Carpenter said. “But he had a boss. Chip got fired. And all of a sudden now, things we saw in training camp are starting now to come to work. That offensive line looked excellent against Houston”

“That is the best defensive line, the best defense in the NFL, and they looked really, really good. They moved from zone, a kind of a wide zone to a more man-to-man attack zone, which is what Brennan Carroll wanted to run. And it’s what Brennan Carroll ran a lot in OTAs and mini camps and all of a sudden now, we see the Raiders offensive line performing at a very high level, down multiple starters…”

Carpenter has talked about Carroll and the coaching staff having bosses for several months, but he has never clarified who they were answering to.

The sense he has put out, though, is that Kelly ran the offense, but Tom Brady was heavily involved.

Earlier this week, Raider Nation Radio host Q Myers seemed to make a similar suggestion about Brady and Kelly.

“I didn’t think his boss was ever Pete Carroll,” Myers said on the Locked on Raiders Squad Show podcast.

“When a guy that’s supposedly underneath one guy and he’s actually not underneath him, it’s hard to establish who’s calling what. So when Chip Kelly got fired, I think it surprised all of us only because I thought he answered to Tom Brady, where Pete Carroll answered to Mark Davis.”

We might not ever get the truth on Brady’s roll in the Raiders’ offense in 2025, but it’s safe to say there has been too many cooks in the kitchen this year in Las Vegas, and it will be interesting to see if that dynamic stays in place going into next year.

x: @raidersbeat