{"id":656945,"date":"2026-01-05T22:15:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T22:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/656945\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T22:15:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T22:15:13","slug":"las-vegas-raiders-where-does-pete-carroll-rank-among-failed-head-coaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/656945\/","title":{"rendered":"Las Vegas Raiders: Where does Pete Carroll rank among failed head coaches?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Las Vegas Raiders officially made Pete Carroll a one-and-done head coach<\/a> by firing Carroll on \u201cBlack Monday<\/a>\u201d. That adds to the list of failed head coaches in Las Vegas, as the next man in charge will be the organization\u2019s sixth (including interims) since moving to the city in 2020. So, where does Carroll\u2019s tenure rank among Jon Gruden\u2019s, Rich Bisaccia\u2019s, Josh McDaniels\u2019 and Antonio Pierce\u2019s?<\/p>\n

The list below is in descending order from least to most successful.<\/p>\n

While McDaniels had a higher winning percentage than Pierce and Carroll, a figure as low as the number above shouldn\u2019t be much of a factor. Also, the former (and now current) New England Patriots offensive coordinator inherited the best situation of those three, as the Raiders were coming off a playoff appearance when he was hired.<\/p>\n

However, McDaniels made the team worse, finishing 6-11 in year one, and lost the locker room halfway through his second season on the job. It was reported that the players lit into him during a team meeting, and Mark Davis met with the team\u2019s leaders, which led to the head coach\u2019s mid-season dismissal. Additionally, the combination of McDaniels\u2019 and former general manager Dave Ziegler\u2019s poor personnel decisions still haunts the organization and is one of the biggest reasons why it\u2019s in this position.<\/p>\n

Carroll came to Las Vegas with hopes of winning immediately, kicking off training camp by bragging about how many times he\u2019s won 10 games in his career. Obviously, he fell well short of that mark and didn\u2019t deliver on that promise. The 74-year-old reportedly clashed with general manager John Spytek on how to build out the roster, and a lot of moves that had the head coach\u2019s fingerprints on them didn\u2019t work out, most notably bringing in quarterback Geno Smith.<\/p>\n

As a result, Carroll\u2019s tenure ends with the third-worst winning percentage of any head coach in franchise history<\/a>, trailing only Bill Conkright (.111) and Marty Feldman (.118). Feldman was the organization\u2019s second coach ever, hired in 1961 and fired five games into the 1962 campaign before Conkright finished as the interim that year. Then, a guy by the name of Al Davis took over.<\/p>\n

\"LAS<\/a><\/p>\n

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – JANUARY 05: Head coach Antonio Pierce of the Las Vegas Raiders looks down field against the Los Angeles Chargers in the first quarter of their game at Allegiant Stadium on January 05, 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Chargers defeated the Raiders 34-20. (Photo by Candice Ward\/Getty Images) Getty Images<\/p>\n

Pierce will be remembered as a quality interim coach, guiding the Raiders to a 5-4 finish in 2023, who couldn\u2019t handle the duties of the full-time job. He managed to get buy-in from the players, essentially by being more personable than McDaniels. However, it was pretty clear that Pierce wasn\u2019t ready to take over the reins, struggling with the game management and administrative duties of the job.<\/p>\n

That led to a 4-13 season a year ago, but hey, that\u2019s still one win better than this past season.<\/p>\n

A case could be made that Bisaccia is actually the most successful head coach in Sin City. He has the highest winning percentage and is the only coach to make a postseason appearance. Also, he deserves credit for navigating the team through plenty of off-the-field negativity to finish with a four-game win streak and earn a Wild Card spot. But it\u2019s a small sample size where Bisaccia was never in charge of the full operation.<\/p>\n

Record (LV only): 11-10 (.524)<\/p>\n

To be fair, Gruden\u2019s tenure started in Oakland and was pretty ugly with back-to-back losing seasons. However, he went .500 and was 3-2 in Vegas before resigning after the infamous email scandal in 2021. Plus, the Raiders were rolling by winning three out of their first four games of the season until that story broke.<\/p>\n

The most impressive aspect of Gruden the head coach, is that he was able to overcome Gruden the general manager. Yes, Mike Mayock deserves some of the blame, too. But it was never much of a secret about who was really calling the shots, and that duo had plenty of misses in the draft. Still, the team was competitive, and the roster was good enough to make the playoffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Las Vegas Raiders officially made Pete Carroll a one-and-done head coach by firing Carroll on \u201cBlack Monday\u201d.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2065],"tags":[7,1744,393,86540,2455,2454,6,525],"class_list":{"0":"post-656945","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-las-vegas-raiders","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-las-vegas","10":"tag-las-vegas-raiders","11":"tag-las-vegas-raiders-coaching-staff","12":"tag-lasvegas","13":"tag-lasvegasraiders","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-raiders"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115844803840879738","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656945","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=656945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}