The Las Vegas Raiders entered the offseason with several of their best players set to hit free agency, while also searching for a new general manager and head coach. Las Vegas would eventually fill both positions, officailly beginning a new era in Las Vegas.
However, in addition to taking over a flawed roster, Pete Carroll also entered a situation where the front office were not the only ones looking for a fresh start. The Raiders lost nearly half of its starters on defense, shortly after free agency officially started.
While the players that left nearly all received more money from their new team than it would have made sense for the Raiders to pay them, there is no way to find many positives from a team losing so many starters in one offseason.
It is rare for a team to lose as many starters in free agency as the Raiders did. Las Vegas signed multiple players, but it is still a tall task to have so many new and moving parts in one offseason. Carroll initially said he wanted to keep the team's free agents but they were unable to do so.
"I think I said early on we'd like to keep our guys. That was the truth because that's all we had. And so, as we entered into the process, we found out that there was a lot of guys that were interested. And so, we made each decision one at a time, and I thought John [Spytek] did a great job of giving us an opportunity," Carroll said.
"I think we got better. In managing the process, we had to spread that money around, make all those cool decisions that you've got to make, and I thought John was right on it. I'm thrilled about the guys we picked up. Let's start with Geno [Smith] on the offensive side, but particularly on the defensive side, we hit some numbers."
The Raiders have faced plenty of adversity over the past few seasons. Finding a way to successfully bounce back from losing several starters in free agency is just another chance to the Raiders to show their resiliency.
