Raiders QB coach lauds Smith: ‘He’s everything you’d look for’

Greg Olson is back with the Raiders.

Again.

Olson, 62, first came to the organization as an offensive coordinator in 2013 and 2014. He returned in the same role under Jon Gruden from 2018 to 2021, but wasn’t retained when Josh McDaniels took over.

Olson then spent a year working with the Rams as a senior offensive assistant before going to work for Pete Carroll as his quarterbacks coach in Seattle in 2023, where he worked with Geno Smith.

That made Olson a natural choice for Carroll’s quarterbacks coach with the Raiders, especially once the team traded for Smith in March.

Olson recently sat down with the Review-Journal to discuss his love of the franchise, his feelings about Smith and much more:

RJ: You’re reunited with Smith. How do you evaluate where he’s at and what he brings to the team?

Olson: Obviously, having a chance to work with him in Seattle, I’ve got a familiarity with him. I think he’s extremely competitive, intelligent, he’s accurate. Got a lot of intangibles that you like about him, like being a hard worker and great practice player. I can’t say enough good things about him in terms of, to me, the intangibles that he possesses. But on top of that, he’s a really great story when you look at what he went through in his career and the years he had in Seattle. Very few players get that second opportunity and he made the most of it. So in my year with him, I couldn’t have asked for a better student than Geno was. He’s everything you look for as a coach and he gives us a top-tier quarterback,

RJ: He has a reputation of being a leader to everyone from starters to practice squad guys. Is that your experience and where does that come from?

Olson: I believe that was a humbling experience for him in New York (with the Jets) and now he’s had a chance to kind of step back a little bit. He’s able to step back in a backup role in different organizations behind different quarterbacks. He’ll speak highly and glowingly of Philip Rivers and what Philip Rivers meant to him and Russell Wilson when he went to Seattle. So he’s had two premier quarterbacks in the league that mentored him later on in his career and I think that helped him tremendously. And he’d be the first guy to say that and to give credit to those two guys. And when he was in that backup role, not only was he learning how to prepare in case he got that second opportunity, but I think he embraced the cities that he was living in and the franchise that he was working for, just to be the best version of Geno Smith. And really, he took a lot of pride in understanding what his role was. He knew his role was to be a backup and trying to help these guys become the best starters they can be and at the same time prep for himself, in case he got the opportunity to start again.

RJ: How would you describe his relationship with Pete and how important will that be to their potential success together with the Raiders?

Olson: Super special. I think between both of them there’s a tremendous amount of trust. … And I think in any relationship in life, if you don’t have trust, you don’t have anything. I know that certainly Geno trusts Pete and Pete trusts Geno and that’s a big part of playing the position when you’re the starting quarterback. And again, Pete gave him that opportunity. I think when they made the decision in Seattle to make Geno the starter and part ways with Russ, that showed Geno a lot. “Wow, this guy’s got a lot of trust in me to move on from someone like Russ and make me the starter.” And I feel like for Pete it was validated when he made Geno the starter and Geno came in and played extremely well for him those years. So happy for both of them. I know they’ve both got a great, strong relationship, but again, it all started with trust.

RJ: This is the third time you’ve been hired by the Raiders. What is it about this organization that keeps drawing you back in?

Olson: You know, to me, it’s the most special organization in all of pro sports, not just football. The Raiders and what Al Davis meant and now what Mark (Davis) has done in bringing the team here to Las Vegas, it’s always been one of the most storied franchises in NFL history. It will be forever for me. I think often times we’ll bring up stories of plays or players of the past like “Ghost to the Post” and a lot of the great plays that have happened in Raider history and a lot of these players don’t know that. So I guess I’ve found myself now as a historian trying to teach these players things like (how to properly pronounce Kenny Stabler’s name). So let’s try and get some of those things right. And we’re looking at it, but a lot of the great memories that a lot of us, I guess, older people have, of NFL football, really start with the Raiders and Al Davis.

RJ: What was the first day back in the building like for you? What were the emotions?

Olson: It feels great. I didn’t want to leave three years ago. I did not want to leave. So to get the opportunity, I tell my kids, if there’s one thing you should learn about this lesson in life is don’t burn bridges when you leave somewhere and you’re forced to leave somewhere. So certainly it didn’t end the way I wanted it to after the last time I was here in the playoff loss, but we were proud of a lot of things that we had accomplished that season, and it hurt. It hurt to leave. So, I’m just really, really thankful for the opportunity to be back.

Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on X.