This Raiders 2025 season was never supposed to look like this. The team was not projected to dominate the AFC, but there was a reasonable expectation of competitiveness. A team that could control games better, protect the quarterback, and avoid the self inflicted wounds that have haunted past seasons.
With talent like Brock Bowers, Ashton Jeanty, former comeback player of the year Geno Smith, and a number of free agent pickups, we definitely didn’t anticipate being the worst team in the NFL this year.
Instead, what Raider Nation has watched unfold is a rapid bleed. A season defined by stalled drives, ugly turnovers, and long afternoons where momentum disappears before it ever has a chance to build.
At the center of it all is an offensive line that has consistently failed to hold up.
But the story of the Raiders 2025 season does not stop there.
As the pressure mounts, the mistakes around it multiply. Young receivers missing assignments and balls hitting the turf. Passes getting tipped straight into defenders’ hands.
When the foundation cracks, everything above it becomes unstable.
Raiders 2025 Season: Offensive Line Play Is Still the Core Issue
Football still begins and ends at the line of scrimmage. No amount of talent on the outside can overcome consistent pressure up front.
The Raiders offensive line has struggled all season in both pass protection and run blocking. Edge rushers are winning one on one battles far too easily. Interior pressure collapses pockets before routes can develop. Blitzes do not even need disguise anymore because protection breakdowns happen without them.
This has created an offense that feels rushed by default.
Quarterbacks are not meant to operate under constant duress. When pressure becomes the norm instead of the exception, timing disappears and confidence erodes.
Greg Olson Taking Over Has Not Fixed the Core Issues
When the Raiders fired Chip Kelly and handed the offense to Greg Olson, the hope was simple: calm things down, simplify the system, and stop the bleeding.
So far, that reset has not delivered meaningful results.
The playbook may look similar to most, maybe it is different on paper, but the outcomes remain painfully familiar. Protection still breaks down. Drives still stall. Turnovers still flip games. And the offense still struggles to find any sustained rhythm.
That tells you something important.
The Raiders 2025 season is not just the result of a coordinator problem.
Olson Is Managing Damage, Not Building an Identity
Greg Olson’s strength has always been structure and familiarity. He knows the building. He understands the personnel. He brings steadiness where chaos once lived.
But steadiness only helps if the foundation can support it.
Olson has clearly tried to simplify concepts and reduce mental errors, yet the offense still looks limited by what it can physically execute up front. When the offensive line cannot consistently hold blocks, even the cleanest concepts fall apart.
Short passing concepts still get disrupted. Timing routes still break down. The run game still lacks push. Olson is calling plays within a shrinking box.
That is not offensive creativity. That is survival.
Pete Carroll’s Responsibility Is Now Front and Center
With Chip Kelly gone and Greg Olson in place for the rest of the Raiders 2025 season, the spotlight shifts directly to Pete Carroll.
At this point, Carroll owns the offensive direction whether he wants to or not. He chose the staff. He approved the philosophy. He oversees the adjustments.
The continued inability to protect Geno Smith, settle young receivers, and control game flow reflects a lack of cohesion at the top. Culture and effort have improved, but execution and adaptability have not followed.
Carroll’s teams have historically thrived when the trenches were solid. This one is failing where it matters most.
Geno Smith Is Still Operating Without Protection
The coordinator change has not meaningfully changed Geno Smith’s reality. He just missed a game due to multiple injuries. Pressure still arrives early. Pockets still collapse from the interior.
Edge rushers still win without help. Geno is still forced to speed up his process and throw under duress.
That environment leads to interceptions, tipped balls, and forced throws that show up as quarterback mistakes but start elsewhere.
Geno Smith is not a reckless quarterback. He is at his best when he can set his feet, scan the field, and make clean reads. That version of Geno has been rare this season.
Throughout the entire course of the Raiders 2025 season, pressure arrives immediately. Defensive linemen are in his lap before receivers finish breaking routes. When that happens, quarterbacks start to anticipate hits instead of throws. Mechanics break down. Decision making speeds up.
That is where interceptions creep in or the sacks start to stack up.
Some of Geno’s picks this season come directly from pressure forcing early throws. Others come from tipped balls or passes that receivers are not fully prepared for. None of it exists in a vacuum.
A veteran quarterback should not be living in constant triage mode.
Young Receivers Are Still Learning the Hard Way
One of the goals of moving on from Chip Kelly was to help young skill players play faster and more confidently.
That has not happened consistently.
Drops continue to kill drives. Even more damaging, tipped passes by young receivers continue turning into interceptions, a sign of poor situational awareness and chemistry. Those mistakes are magnified when protection is bad and timing is rushed.
Player development does not happen in chaos. Right now, the environment is still chaotic.
This Is Now a Structural Coaching Problem
Already this Raiders 2025 season, the team have changed coordinators. They have adjusted playbooks. They have shifted responsibilities.
And yet, the same problems persist.
That tells you the issue is not play calling alone. It is preparation. It is protection philosophy. It is how weaknesses are addressed or ignored.
Greg Olson can steady the ship, but he cannot rebuild the hull mid season. That responsibility belongs to the head coach and the organization as a whole.
Young Receivers Feeling The Pressure Too
While the offensive line has been the primary culprit, the receiving corps has not been immune from criticism. A number of the Raiders young receivers have struggled with drops at key moments throughout the entire course of the Raiders 2025 season.
Drops kill drives. They also change how quarterbacks throw the football.
When a quarterback stops trusting that passes will be secured, hesitation creeps in. Timing suffers. Placement becomes conservative or forced. That is when balls start arriving slightly off target or slightly late.
Even more damaging have been the tipped passes.
Several interceptions this season have come off receiver hands. Balls that should be caught or knocked down instead get popped into the air, turning routine completions into turnovers.
Those plays do not always show up in the quarterback stat line fairly, but they swing games.
This has specifically been tough to swallow during the duration of the Raiders 2025 season. A tipped pass interception is devastating. It is demoralizing. It instantly flips field position and momentum.
How Drops And Pressure Fed Eachother Throughout the Raiders 2025 Season
The offensive line struggles and receiver mistakes are not separate problems. They feed into each other.
When protection breaks down, receivers rush routes. They expect the ball sooner. When the ball arrives earlier than anticipated, hands are not always ready.
When receivers drop passes, quarterbacks press. They try to make up for lost opportunities. That leads to tighter window throws under pressure.
It becomes a cycle.
The offense never settles into rhythm because it never earns the chance to breathe.
Three And Outs Become Inevitable
This is where the Raiders offense keeps getting stuck.
First down runs go nowhere. Second down passes break down under pressure or get dropped. Suddenly it is third and long with a shaky offensive line.
Third and long is where defenses feast.
Pass rushers pin their ears back. Coverage tightens. Protection collapses. The offense punts.
Three and outs have become a defining feature of this season. They erase any momentum the offense might build and send the defense right back onto the field.
When drives stall early, field position suffers. The Raiders have repeatedly found themselves punting from deep in their own territory.
That gives opponents short fields and easy scoring opportunities.
Even when the defense plays well early in drives, defending a short field increases the margin for error. One missed tackle. One blown coverage. One penalty. Touchdown.
Offensive struggles are putting the defense in impossible positions week after week.
Raiders 2025 Season: The Run Game Has No Chance To Develop
A reliable run game requires consistency up front. That has not been present.
Running backs are getting hit behind the line. Pulling linemen miss assignments. There is no push in short yardage situations. Defenses are not forced to respect play action.
Without a run threat, pass rushers tee off. Linebackers sit on short routes. Safeties cheat forward.
The offense becomes predictable and compressed, and when the Raiders are in the red zone, it has magnified everything that is wrong.
In tight spaces, protection has to be perfect and execution has to be clean. The Raiders have not had either consistently.
Pressure arrives quickly. Routes get disrupted. Receivers drop passes they need to catch. The result is stalled drives and field goals instead of touchdowns.
Those missed opportunities add up.
Penalties And Mental Errors Add Fuel
Offensive line penalties and receiver miscues compound the damage.
False starts and holds push the offense backward. Drops waste positive plays. Miscommunications lead to turnovers. These are often signs of a unit pressing instead of playing free.
The Raiders defense has been asked to shoulder too much.
Short fields. Little rest. Constant pressure to be perfect.
That wears on any unit. Fatigue leads to mistakes. Mistakes lead to points. Points force the offense into catch up mode, which only exposes the offensive line and young receivers even more.
This Raiders 2025 Season Is So Frustrating
Fans can accept rebuilding seasons. What is hard to stomach is watching the same mistakes repeat.
This season feels disappointing because the issues are foundational. Protection breakdowns. Drops. Tipped interceptions. Poor field position. These are not flukes. They are patterns.
Fixing this starts with honesty and accountability.
The offensive line must be addressed aggressively. Receiver development has to accelerate. Execution has to improve.
No quarterback can succeed in this environment. No offense can function without trust up front and reliable hands outside.
The Raiders 2025 season did not fall apart because of one player or one bad decision. It unraveled because too many fundamental issues stacked on top of each other.
The offensive line cracked first. The pressure spread. The mistakes followed.
Until protection improves and young receivers grow into reliable contributors, the cycle will continue.
Raider Nation deserves better than this.
