The Las Vegas Raiders and Denver Broncos begin Week 10 of the 2025 NFL season. Denver is 7-2 while the Raiders are 2-6, which is not unusual to see for Las Vegas but the special interest this year is Pete Carroll as head coach and Geno Smith at quarterback.
Geno is tied for the league lead with 11 interceptions, although he’s at least at a 1-to-1 TD-to-INT ratio again after throwing four TDs to one interception in the loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Pete’s defense (coordinated by Patrick Graham,
one of the few holdovers from the previous staff) is atrocious on third down and is getting drilled in terms of average time of possession, which is all too familiar to Seattle Seahawks fans given the past few defenses bared no resemblance to the Legion of Boom years. Surprisingly, throughout Geno’s struggles, the Raiders are one of the better third down teams in the league, but they’ve been awful in the red zone (Geno has two of his 11 INTs in the red zone) and the running game is dysfunctional. If you’re going to invest in Ashton Jeanty you have to invest in the blockers, too. Oh yeah, and Jakobi Meyers was traded to the Jacksonville Jaguars, so this is a team with little receiving depth (with all due respect to the 2025 version of Tyler Lockett). Brock Bowers is not just TE1, he’s WR1. And despite drafting two receivers in the second- and fourth-round respectively, Carroll has been hesitant to play Jack Bech and Dont’e Thornton, opting to play veterans over young players across both sides of the ball.
The reason this is the John Schneider Fleece Bowl is because the Raiders acquired Geno and extended him, giving up a third-rounder to Seattle in the process. Even if Jalen Milroe never starts for the Seahawks because of how good Sam Darnold has been, I’d say the trade has worked in Seattle’s favor. We know what happened with the Denver Broncos and the Russell Wilson deal, but unlike the Raiders (who are TBD), Denver has done a magnificent job after cutting ties with Russ. Bo Nix is the new franchise quarterback and the Broncos defense is elite. You could argue that the Seahawks and Broncos have both come out really well post-Wilson trade, and both have benefited by moving on from the QBs at the center of the trade.
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