{"id":88950,"date":"2025-07-24T15:27:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T15:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/88950\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T15:27:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T15:27:09","slug":"bears-raiders-among-non-playoff-teams-that-have-made-biggest-leap-since-2024-nfl-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/88950\/","title":{"rendered":"Bears, Raiders among non-playoff teams that have made biggest leap since 2024 NFL season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>PICK: Las Vegas Raiders<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The four-win Raiders entered this offseason with a long to-do list. Perhaps their biggest move was hiring Pete Carroll, who previously revived a franchise and turned it into a perennial winner. Reuniting with his former coach to take care of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/news\/new-raiders-qb-geno-smith-has-unfinished-business-to-take-care-of-with-pete-carroll-i-ll-run-through-a-wall-for-him\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;unfinished business,&#8221;<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/players\/geno-smith\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Geno Smith<\/a> is an upgrade over both <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/players\/aidan-o-connell\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Aidan O&#8217;Connell<\/a> and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/players\/gardner-minshew\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gardner Minshew<\/a>. Also, the Raiders landed one of the top players in this year&#8217;s draft in running back <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/players\/ashton-jeanty\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ashton Jeanty<\/a>. They added young talent to the WR corps in second-rounder <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/players\/jack-bech\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jack Bech<\/a> and fourth-rounder <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/players\/dont-e-thornton-jr\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dont&#8217;e Thornton<\/a>. Smith should have no shortage options with this young group, led by all-world tight end <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/players\/brock-bowers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Brock Bowers<\/a>. At least on paper, this looks far from the offense that ranked 29th in scoring and 27th in yards a year ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The defense looks much improved, too. The Raiders are hoping for the healthy return of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/players\/christian-wilkins\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Christian Wilkins<\/a>, who was limited to five games last season due to a foot injury that currently has him <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/news\/nfl-news-roundup-latest-league-updates-from-tuesday-july-22#raiders\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">on the PUP list<\/a>. They signed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/players\/germaine-pratt\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Germaine Pratt<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/players\/elandon-roberts\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Elandon Roberts<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/players\/jeremy-chinn\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jeremy Chinn<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/players\/eric-stokes-3\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Eric Stokes<\/a> in free agency.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re not yet a believer in a Vegas turnaround in 2025, I&#8217;ll leave you with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/news\/raiders-hc-pete-carroll-we-are-going-to-win-a-bunch-and-i-don-t-care-who-hears-that\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a comment<\/a> Carroll made earlier in the week:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are going to win a bunch of games. I can&#8217;t even imagine anything else. I&#8217;ve been winning 10 games a year for 20 years or something. I mean, what are my expectations? We are going to win a bunch, and I don&#8217;t care who hears that.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PICK: Las Vegas Raiders The four-win Raiders entered this offseason with a long to-do list. Perhaps their biggest&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":88951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[529,531,59515,8017,535,533,1232,530,9005,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-88950","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-analysis","9":"tag-chicago-bears","10":"tag-instant-debate","11":"tag-jacksonville-jaguars","12":"tag-las-vegas-raiders","13":"tag-new-england-patriots","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-no-minute","16":"tag-san-francisco-49ers","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114908918098445841","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}