The Las Vegas Raiders have had very few wins this season, but they did sort of get one in a roundabout way when the mighty Tennessee Titans rose up and beat the Cleveland Browns, 31-29. The Titans’ win tied them with the Raiders in the win column with two, which means the Raiders are on track to “earn” the top pick in the 2026 NFL draft.
The Raiders odds of getting the pick rose to over 40 percent, according to a piece written by Jayna Bardahl of The Athletic, but there’s a long way to go and a lot of other teams involved in this potential tankathon. The Raiders only winnable game right now is their Week 17 game against the New York Giants, which should now be epically bad for all sorts of reasons.
The fly in the ointment here might be Las Vegas Raiders coach Pete Carroll, who’s still coaching to win games as he tried to keep his job. It’s fair to ask if he’ll be told to tank the Giants game especially, which very much goes against Carroll’s basic nature.
The other controversy surrounding this pick is whether the Raiders will use it to draft a quarterback. Bad teams seem to make this mistake at the top of the draft every year, and the Titans are just the latest team to be paying the price by drafting a quarterback wit a bad roster.
The two candidates for the Raiders are Oregon QB Donte Moore and Indiana product Fernando Mendoza. Draft expert Dane Brugler recently had the Raiders taking Moore even though he’s just 20, and a lot of other “experts” have Las Vegas taking Mendoza now that the Raiders have risen to the to of the draft board.
Both of these picks would likely be a mistake. The Raiders roster still needs a ton of work to be competitive, especially on the offensive line. That’s not to say Las Vegas should draft a lineman at the top of the draft, just to make the point that a young quarterback would get destroyed behind it as the Raiders are currently constituted.
The overall goal should be to restore direction, and step one in that process is parting ways with Carroll. It’s hard to trust owner Mark Davis with doing this given how bad he’s been in the past, but this rebuild starts from the top, and it’s really on Davis to get it right this time.