{"id":232691,"date":"2025-07-24T15:55:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T15:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/232691\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T15:55:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T15:55:10","slug":"bears-raiders-among-non-playoff-teams-that-have-made-biggest-leap-since-2024-nfl-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/232691\/","title":{"rendered":"Bears, Raiders among non-playoff teams that have made biggest leap since 2024 NFL season"},"content":{"rendered":"

PICK: Las Vegas Raiders<\/p>\n

The four-win Raiders entered this offseason with a long to-do list. Perhaps their biggest move was hiring Pete Carroll, who previously revived a franchise and turned it into a perennial winner. Reuniting with his former coach to take care of “unfinished business,”<\/a> Geno Smith<\/a> is an upgrade over both Aidan O’Connell<\/a> and\u00a0Gardner Minshew<\/a>. Also, the Raiders landed one of the top players in this year’s draft in running back Ashton Jeanty<\/a>. They added young talent to the WR corps in second-rounder Jack Bech<\/a> and fourth-rounder Dont’e Thornton<\/a>. Smith should have no shortage options with this young group, led by all-world tight end Brock Bowers<\/a>. At least on paper, this looks far from the offense that ranked 29th in scoring and 27th in yards a year ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The defense looks much improved, too. The Raiders are hoping for the healthy return of Christian Wilkins<\/a>, who was limited to five games last season due to a foot injury that currently has him on the PUP list<\/a>. They signed Germaine Pratt<\/a>, Elandon Roberts<\/a>, Jeremy Chinn<\/a> and Eric Stokes<\/a> in free agency.<\/p>\n

If you’re not yet a believer in a Vegas turnaround in 2025, I’ll leave you with a comment<\/a> Carroll made earlier in the week:<\/p>\n

“We are going to win a bunch of games. I can’t even imagine anything else. I’ve been winning 10 games a year for 20 years or something. I mean, what are my expectations? We are going to win a bunch, and I don’t care who hears that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PICK: Las Vegas Raiders The four-win Raiders entered this offseason with a long to-do list. Perhaps their biggest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[90,391,7,6516,125,393,249,6,84,609,252],"class_list":{"0":"post-232691","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl-playoffs","8":"tag-analysis","9":"tag-chicago-bears","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-instant-debate","12":"tag-jacksonville-jaguars","13":"tag-las-vegas-raiders","14":"tag-new-england-patriots","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-nfl-playoffs","17":"tag-no-minute","18":"tag-san-francisco-49ers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114909028188100312","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}