Raiders’ Pete Carroll has no comment on future with team after loss to Giants

A season Pete Carroll never could have seen coming will mercifully come to a close next weekend, when the Raiders host the Chiefs at Allegiant Stadium.

The question now is, will he survive the inevitable changes that are coming?

The veteran coach was brought to Las Vegas to raise the floor of a franchise that has had two winning seasons during the last 23 years. If anything, the Raiders (2-14) have sunk to a new low, dropping 10 straight games, including Sunday’s 34-10 drubbing at the hands of the New York Giants.

The same Giants, incidentally, who took the field tied with the Raiders for the worst record in the NFL. For at least one week, the Raiders wear the dubious crown of the worst team in professional football.

It’s the kind of loss and the sort of season that ends up getting coaches fired. Carroll’s future with the Raiders has been in serious doubt for weeks.

“I have no comment to make about that at all,” Carroll said when asked if he expects to return next season.

Carroll did say the vibe he gets when speaking to Raiders brass leads him to believe the organization has his back.

“Yeah, I do. I do,” Carroll said. “From all the guys I’ve talked to, I do feel I have their support.”

That said, Carroll isn’t about to read between any lines or make any assumptions.

“What that means, I don’t know,” Carroll said. “Our conversations have been really good.”

Carroll indicated the feedback he is getting has been positive.

“We’re getting along great, we’re communicating really well,” Carroll said. “We’ll see what happens.”

Reflecting on lost season

While Carroll has said many times, he never saw this kind of season coming. He did suggest Sunday the Raiders’ winless preseason provided some warning signs.

“We were fortunate to tie Seattle,” he said.

The vast majority of this season followed a similar pattern.

”We just haven’t found our wins,” Carroll said. “We haven’t found our way to win.”

Ironically, the Raiders opened the season with one of the NFL’s most unlikely wins of the year when they beat the Patriots in New England. Since then, the Patriots have reeled off 13 wins and claimed the AFC East title. The Patriots head to the playoffs as one of the most impressive teams in the tournament.

“That was a pretty solid win for us,” Carroll said.

But it came at a major cost: Star tight end Brock Bowers suffered a fourth-quarter knee injury that eventually sidelined him for three games and hobbled him in a handful of others. The Raiders dropped their next four game and 14 of their last 16.

Carroll is flummoxed by how it went so bad so fast.

“I had no place in my mind to see this,” Carroll said. “You just try to figure out how to go, one week at a time, come on back and find the focus to work really hard and give it a really good shot to see if we can play good football.

“And that’s what we’re going to try to do again. And I don’t doubt these guys one bit.”

Contact Vincent Bonsignore at vbonsignore@reviewjournal.com. Follow @VinnyBonsignore on X.