Team

Las Vegas Raiders

AFC West

A 1-10 record under 20 points is roughly what history predicts, so the offense's failures were priced in. What made 2025 a three-win season instead of a six-win one is the 2-4 above the line: when a team loses the games its offense shows up for, both sides of the ball are broken at once, and that is the profile of a full rebuild rather than a fix.

FanIQ Research · August 30, 2026 · 9 facts, every one from the play-by-play

The 3-14 floor

Las Vegas reached 20 points six times all season, and even that only bought a 2-4 record.

Split

LV 2025 record by points scored (regular season)

Points scored	Games	Record
Under 20	11	1-10
20 or more	6	2-4

How low the floor went

Measure	Value
Games under 10 points	5
Points per game	14.2 (241 total)
Points allowed per game	25.4 (432 total)

The 20-point line is the fastest honest read of an NFL Sunday, and the Raiders spent 2025 on the wrong side of it: under 20 in 11 of 17 games, going 1-10 in them, with five games that never reached double digits. The damning detail is the other row: even when the offense did its job, the team went 2-4, because a defense allowing 25.4 a game kept moving the finish line.

Why it matters. A 1-10 record under 20 points is roughly what history predicts, so the offense's failures were priced in. What made 2025 a three-win season instead of a six-win one is the 2-4 above the line: when a team loses the games its offense shows up for, both sides of the ball are broken at once, and that is the profile of a full rebuild rather than a fix.

Eleven sub-20 games do not sentence the 2026 offense to the same fate. The clunker count resets.

The 2025 ugliness, itemized

Measure	Value
Games under 20 points	11 of 17
Games under 10 points	5
Offense EPA/play	-0.215 (32nd)

The folklore after a season like this is a life sentence: a broken offense stays broken. The record says otherwise, with a catch. How many clunker games a team suffers barely carries over from one season to the next; those five sub-10 box scores are weather, not climate. What does carry over is the underlying quality, and that is the catch: the -0.215 EPA per play (32nd) is the part 2026 inherits. Expect fewer humiliations without expecting a good offense.

Why it matters. This distinction is how fans misread rebuilds in both directions. The team will almost certainly stop losing 3-and-out theater games at the 2025 rate, and that will look like progress; whether it IS progress depends entirely on the per-play efficiency moving off the league floor. Grade 2026 on EPA per play, not on how many Sundays avoid embarrassment.

Rock bottom has a bounce built in: three-win teams average four more wins the next year. Expect 5-7.

LV 2025 profile (regular season)

Measure	Value
Record	3-14
Point differential	-191 (-11.2 per game)
Expected wins from points	3.3
One-score games	2-5

Teams with 3 or fewer wins, 1999-2024: what happened next

Measure	Value
Team-seasons	57
Avg wins, year one	2.3
Avg wins, year two	6.0
Improved	52 of 57
Gained 3+ wins	32 of 57

There is no luck story to lean on here: Las Vegas's -191 differential says the 3-14 was fully earned (expected wins: 3.3). The bounce case is pure gravity. The 57 teams since 1999 that finished with 3 or fewer wins averaged 6.0 wins the following season, 52 of them improved, and 32 gained at least three. Schedules soften, draft position pays, and coin flips stop all landing the same way. The gradeable call: the Raiders win 5-7 games in 2026, even without a roster miracle.

Why it matters. The forecast is deliberately unromantic: it predicts improvement without predicting a good team, because the mechanism is regression, not hidden quality. That framing matters for judging 2026 honestly. Six wins would be exactly what history hands the average three-win team; the front office only deserves credit for anything beyond it.

How this team plays

The Raiders score on the opening script, then vanish. Their offense is dead last in the league through the middle two quarters.

Rare

LV offense EPA/play by quarter, NFL rank (2023-2025, reg season)

Quarter	EPA/play	NFL rank
1st	-0.084	27th
2nd	-0.146	32nd
3rd	-0.243	32nd
4th	-0.138	31st

Worst offense EPA/play in quarters 2 and 3 combined, 2023-2025

Rank	Team	EPA/play	Plays
32	LV	-0.192	1,454
31	CLE	-0.157	1,626
30	NYJ	-0.141	1,507
29	TEN	-0.133	1,416
28	CAR	-0.089	1,532

Las Vegas is bad in every quarter, but the bottom truly drops out in the middle of games. They sit 27th in the 1st quarter (-0.084), the only window where they are merely below average and not at the floor. Then they collapse: dead last (32nd) in both the 2nd and 3rd quarters, and across those two quarters combined their -0.192 EPA per play is the worst in the NFL, a clear gap below 31st-place Cleveland (-0.157). The script works once. Then the well runs dry.

Why it matters. A first-quarter offense that craters by the middle quarters is the signature of a scripted-opener team with no second act, no in-game answers once the call sheet runs out and the defense adjusts. The 3rd quarter is where good staffs win the chess match coming out of halftime; the Raiders lose it worse than anyone, which is a coaching-and-adjustment indictment as much as a talent one.

The Raiders can't complete a deep ball, but try throwing one on them: their deep defense is top-6 in the league.

Anomaly

LV deep ball (20+ air yards), both sides, NFL rank (2023-2025 reg)

Unit	EPA/play	Comp %	NFL rank
Offense (throwing deep)	+0.077	32.0%	29th
Defense (defending deep)	+0.224	33.1%	6th

Best deep-ball defenses, EPA/play allowed, 2023-2025

Rank	Team	EPA allowed	Deep att faced
1	PHI	+0.160	224
2	GB	+0.176	152
3	NE	+0.177	205
4	SEA	+0.193	182
5	NO	+0.193	218
6	LV	+0.224	163

Same skill, opposite results. When the Raiders launch one 20-plus yards downfield, they produce +0.077 EPA per play, 29th in the NFL, near the bottom of the league. When opponents try the same shot against them, the Raiders allow just +0.224 EPA per play, the 6th-stingiest deep defense in football, ahead of 26 teams. The secondary erases the over-the-top game the offense itself can't access.

Why it matters. Most teams are roughly symmetric on the deep ball; Las Vegas is one of the sharpest splits in the league, elite at preventing the shot, bottom-of-the-league at hitting it. That is a roster built backwards from a contender: the safety help and coverage are real, but without a quarterback who can stretch the field, the defense's best trait has no offensive mirror to lean on.

The Raiders' defense stuffs the run and smothers the deep ball, then never takes the ball away. It's a bend-don't-break unit with no splash.

Comparison

LV defense identity, NFL rank (2023-2025, reg season)

Category	NFL rank
Run defense (EPA/play)	9th
Deep-ball defense (EPA/play)	6th
Takeaway rate (per play)	27th
3rd-down stop rate	30th

Lowest takeaway rate, 2023-2025 (INT + fumble per play)

Rank	Team	Takeaway rate	INT	Fum
27	LV	2.38%	31	44
28	JAX	2.38%	44	33
29	ARI	2.36%	30	45
30	CAR	2.09%	32	33
31	WAS	2.03%	23	43
32	TEN	1.98%	23	38

The strengths are real and specific: 9th against the run, 6th defending the deep ball. The problem is everything that ends drives. The Raiders rank 27th in takeaway rate (just 31 interceptions in three years) and 30th in 3rd-down stop rate, so they hold the line but rarely get off the field on their own terms. They prevent the big play and the long touchdown, then let opponents grind out the rest.

Why it matters. Run-stop and deep coverage are about discipline and gap integrity; takeaways and 3rd-down stops are about pressure and disruption that flip field position and momentum. A defense strong at the former and weak at the latter keeps games close but hands a punchless offense no short fields or extra possessions, which is the worst pairing for a team that already can't score. They bend correctly, they just never break the opponent's will.

The record books and the carousel

In 2018 the Raiders recorded 13 sacks all season, fewest in the NFL by half. They turned that into the foundation of their identity.

Rare

Fewest team sacks, 2018 regular season

Rank	Team	Sacks
32 (fewest)	LV	13
31	NE	30
31	NYG	30
29	MIA	31

LV team sacks by season, and NFL rank

Season	Sacks	NFL rank
2018	13	32nd
2021	35	20th
2023	46	13th
2024	38	21st
2025	37	18th

The 2018 Raiders traded away their best pass rusher in September and finished with 13 sacks, the fewest of any team in the league and less than half of the 30 posted by the next-worst clubs. That same defense ranked dead last (32nd) in EPA allowed. From rock bottom they rebuilt the pass rush into the unit's identity: 46 sacks by 2023, and 37 in 2025 even on a 3-win team. The trenches became the one thing this franchise could count on.

Why it matters. Thirteen sacks across a full season is a historically barren pass rush, the kind of number that forces a teardown. The Raiders responded by making edge pressure the organizing principle of the roster (Crosby was drafted into this vacuum the next spring), which is why even their worst recent teams still get to the quarterback at a respectable clip while the offense around them collapses.

With Derek Carr the Raiders ran a middle-of-the-pack offense. Every year since he left, it has finished lower than the last.

Trend

LV offense EPA/play and NFL rank, by season

Season	Off EPA/play	NFL rank
2019	+0.048	10th
2020	+0.045	13th
2021	-0.019	20th
2022	0.000	17th
2023	-0.097	25th
2024	-0.143	31st
2025	-0.215	32nd

Offense EPA/play, Carr era vs after, with NFL rank

Window	Off EPA/play	NFL rank
2018-2022 (Carr)	+0.004	17th
2023-2025 (after)	-0.150	31st

From 2019 to 2022 the Raiders fielded a viable offense, peaking at 10th in 2019 and never finishing worse than 20th, a solid 17th overall across Carr's last five years. Since he left, the line on the chart only points down: 25th in 2023, 31st in 2024, dead last (32nd) in 2025, where their -0.215 EPA per play was the worst single-season offense the franchise has posted in this dataset. The carousel of replacements (Garoppolo, Minshew, Smith) hasn't found the floor, it keeps lowering it.

Why it matters. Carr was never a star, which is exactly the point: he was the difference between an average offense and a historically bad one. The post-Carr decline is monotonic, worse every single year, which is the fingerprint of a quarterback problem the front office has tried to paper over with veteran stopgaps instead of solving. Until that seat is settled, the slide has no reason to stop.

Five head coaches in eight seasons. The carousel is the franchise's steadiest tradition.

Trend

Who ran the Raiders sideline, 2018-2025

Season	Head coach
2018-2020	Jon Gruden
2021	Jon Gruden, then Rich Bisaccia
2022	Josh McDaniels
2023	Josh McDaniels, then Antonio Pierce
2024	Antonio Pierce
2025	Pete Carroll

Most head coaches used, 2018-2025 (interims included)

Rank	Team	Coaches
1	CAR	6
2	LV	5
2	JAX	5
2	HOU	5
2	DEN	5

Since 2018 the Raiders have handed the headset to five different men, two of them promoted mid-collapse, a churn rate only Carolina exceeds. Twice in eight years the season ended with a different coach than it started with. The contrast with the division is brutal: over the same window Kansas City employed exactly one head coach, and won the games to justify it every year but one.

Why it matters. Coaching churn is both a symptom and a cause: losing gets coaches fired, and constant scheme resets make losing stickier, because every new staff spends a year reinstalling. The 2026 question is whether the current regime gets the runway that none of its four predecessors earned, and the three-win floor it inherits makes the early results almost guaranteed to look better.

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