With John Spytek and Pete Carroll now in charge, the Las Vegas Raiders will begin a new era in 2025. After a 4-13 effort in 2024, the Raiders have a lot of work to do during the 2025 NFL offseason in the trade market, free agency, and draft.

The Raiders will enter Lambeau Field in April with the No. 6 overall pick. Given the blatant holes on their roster, that selection could truly go in any direction. Las Vegas would love to take a quarterback, but both Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders are expected to be gone before its selection. The 2025 NFL Draft quarterback class is likely not deep enough to have three signal-callers taken in the top 10.

While Carroll is the ideal coach to take over a struggling franchise, the current state of Las Vegas’ offense puts the team in a dire position. The Raiders ended 2024 without a firm solution at quarterback, running back or receiver. Star rookie Brock Bowers gave them everything they wanted at tight end but had virtually nothing around him to sustain consistent success.

Defense will also be a concern for the team, especially going from a defensive-minded head coach in Antonio Pierce to Carroll. During his final years with the Seattle Seahawks, Carroll’s defense consistently ranked near the bottom of the league.

The Raiders have too many issues to solve in just one offseason, but regardless, Spytek will need to hit the trade market to give Carroll a running start.

DK Metcalf is at a weird spot in his career. He is coming off one of the worst seasons of his career in 2024 as a direct consequence of Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s second-year breakout. Metcalf will enter a contract year in 2025, potentially making him a trade target for the Raiders to pursue in the 2025 NFL offseason.

If Metcalf is moved, a reunion with Carroll in Las Vegas would be ideal. The best years of his career came under Carroll, and he is clearly not resonating with Geno Smith as well as Smith-Njigba has. It just so happens that the Raiders are in desperate need of receiving help. Metcalf would immediately be their best wideout by a mile.

In 2024, the Raiders were led by Bowers’ 1,194 receiving yards. Jakobi Meyers was right behind him with 1,027 to lead the receivers. No other player even topped 600 yards on the year.

Meyers, for as consistent as he is, profiles more as a WR2 than a WR1. The Raiders are going to bring in a new quarterback in 2025, and regardless of who it is, he will need an alpha target.

If Spytek pursues this route, acquiring Metcalf would not be cheap. In 2025, he will enter the final year of his $72 million extension, which has a cap hit of $31.8 million. But Las Vegas has the room to make it work, and few moves would be smarter to open the Pete Carroll era.

No team had a worse rushing offense in 2024 than the Raiders. Despite what Pierce promised at the beginning of the year, the team averaged a horrific 3.6 yards per carry, last in the league. Pierce could not develop any consistency or chemistry in the backfield and bounced back and forth between Ameer Abdullah, Sincere McCormick, and Alexander Mattison.

Regardless of contract situations, neither can return as the team’s starter in 2025. The Raiders may land their next project in the draft, but a trade seems more likely. Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Rachaad White would be the perfect player to target.

White started every game in 2023 and entered 2024 with the same role but lost it halfway through the season to rookie Bucky Irving. Once he supplanted White as the RB1 in Tampa Bay, Irving did not look back and ended the year with 1,122 rushing yards despite coming off the bench for half of the year.

After 2024, there is no denying who the running back of the future is in Tampa. However, Irving’s emergence overshadowed an improved year for White. While his rushing yards were down from the year before, White improved on his previously lackluster efficiency to average 4.3 yards per carry in his third year. It was not an elite mark, but it was a significant step up from the 3.6 he notched in 2023.

White is now set to enter the final year of his four-year rookie contract in the 2025 NFL offseason. He still has the talent and frame to serve as a starting running back, even if it is not to the level the Buccaneers originally had hoped for. With Las Vegas, he would provide an immediate lift to an otherwise dead Raiders backfield.