Pete Carroll Press Conference - 12.29.25 | RPP

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Welcome to the Raiders Press Pass. Your credential to all things silver and black.

SPEAKER_2 (0:10)

I was wondering, any update on Gina Smith, and what is availability for this week?

Pete Carroll (0:14)

Yeah, it looks like he does not have a high ankle sprain, but he sprained his ankle. And so, we'll see what that means. Don't know right now, but it's significant, though.

SPEAKER_4 (0:23)

We'll give it a better idea.

Pete Carroll (0:26)

Pardon me? As far as playing on Sunday, won't we have a better idea? Well, we'll just go day to day and see what's happening, but it's going to be hard for him to play, I think. It'll be a challenge.

SPEAKER_2 (0:35)

Will you open up the competition this week for...

Pete Carroll (0:38)

Sure.

SPEAKER_5 (0:43)

Ready to name a starter?

Pete Carroll (0:45)

No, let's just see what happens here and give us a couple of days to figure it out. I'm anxious to see Kenny and Aiden play if they get the chance. So we'll see how that goes.

SPEAKER_5 (0:55)

Pete, watching the game again last night, I was surprised Malcolm, not surprised that he can't, but Malcolm Coons had even watching the game, a better game than what I saw watching live. What did you think of his evaluation just kind of as he was?

Pete Carroll (1:10)

He was really active, you know, he's active on the run in the past game. He was getting off the tackle and, you know, had played a factor in running plays as well as past plays. Didn't get home like we'd hoped, you know, but he still, he really went for it. He knew that he had to really play up and we needed the activity from him, and I thought he came through in that regard.

SPEAKER_5 (1:32)

The offensive line played so well in Houston, and it certainly struggled yesterday. I'm curious, what causes that, what do you see that maybe you saw a difference in the performance, the offensive line between the two games?

Pete Carroll (1:43)

There's Dexter Lawrence that had a hell of a game against us yesterday. He really dictated what was going on inside. And they've got two terrific edge guys. Those guys, and I know Houston does too, but in this matchup, it seemed like their inside guys were more of a factor than the Houston guys were.

And we lost Parm right off the bat. He was sick coming off the pregame. And so, you know, Moffey jumped in, had to play, and Caleb had to go up against him, and they were tough matchups. What are you looking to get out of this last week from your team? I'd like to have fun playing football. Practice with a lot of energy. Get ready for a game. We're playing Kansas City. They won the freaking division for 10 years straight, or whatever it is. It'll be fun to play them. Fun to go against Andy, to me.

There's no reason for us to think about anything other than playing ball. And so from the locker room, that's what I said to him afterward, that we got one week to do something special. Let's make sure that we do everything we can to create that, and we'll see what happens.

SPEAKER_2 (2:51)

You mentioned that you expected Max to be back in the building today. Is that the case?

Pete Carroll (2:56)

Yeah, he's here.

SPEAKER_2 (2:58)

How are those conversations?

Pete Carroll (2:59)

We were just texting last night. I haven't seen him this morning.

SPEAKER_6 (3:04)

Whether it's players or philosophies, would you say there's any building blocks just around the building that make you optimistic for the future? How do you continue to build around that?

Pete Carroll (3:13)

Well, we're just going to keep going like we go, and we just try to make it as hard for everybody as possible to compete to be the player that they're capable of being. And there's going to be opportunities now for, you know, tremendous opportunities for acquisitions to add to the team. We'll see how that goes, but we'll just try to continue to make it as competitive in all spots as we can possibly make it. And our guys have taken to the mentality. They know when I say stuff like that, they know what I'm talking about, and they have to rise up every day and battle against each other and try to see who can win and who's going to get on the highlights the next day in the meetings and all that.

That's the foundation of it. It's where you're coming from, and we're coming to compete to be as good as we can possibly be. And we know this team a lot better now. We know who we got, and we'll do everything we can to make it as good as possible.