HENDERSON, Nev. — As the Las Vegas Raiders stretched and went through warmups at Friday’s training camp practice, team owner Mark Davis sat more than 50 yards away under a shaded platform. Laid out before him was an ocean of new faces that have come to define his franchise’s latest sweeping reboot — from the majority of his retooled coaching staff, his new starting quarterback, a first-time general manager, to more than 40 new players threading through the training camp depth chart.
And of course, one very notable omission who became an ex-Raider on Thursday: prize 2024 free agent defensive tackle signee Christian Wilkins, who was dumped by the team in a jarring move that had already seen Las Vegas void $35.2 million of his guaranteed salary last month. It’s a staggering end for a player who was expected to wreak havoc on AFC West offenses and give star Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby a running partner who could help balance the scales against Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. Instead, Wilkins appeared in only five games before suffering a Jones fracture in his left foot, setting the table for a potential surgery and rehabilitation that conceivably should have had him back onto the field this month.
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He wasn’t. And now he won’t ever be for the Raiders, who sent a football and culture message that might as well have been plastered onto a theater marquee at the entrance of the team’s Henderson practice facility. Something like:
If you’re not going to be playing for us, you’re not going to be sticking around with us.
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Without a doubt, that’s how this new regime is planning to operate moving forward, refusing to hang onto what it views as roster-building errors from past regimes and also aiming to be aggressive in moving on from any mistakes it might commit in the future. With head coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Spytek at the controls, the mandate is to make sure the next iteration of the Raiders doesn’t fall into familiar (and seemingly longstanding) pitfalls and get dragged further by roster-building blunders.
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For the Raiders, Wilkins became that when the team demanded for months some kind of cogent plan — most likely involving surgery — to get him back into the fold and playing football. The Raiders’ brass didn’t see that materializing, and that ultimately ended the relationship between a hopeful building block and the brain trust neither signed him nor saw him play a single snap in 2025.
“We took a long time to make our decision,” Carroll said. “We watched our way through the whole thing. We’re keeping really clear with what we said. I think there was no clear path to his return, and so we just had to move on.”
Christian Wilkins played in only five games with the Raiders. (Heidi Fang/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(Las Vegas Review-Journal via Getty Images)
Talking more generally about his philosophy with players, Carroll later added, “Each practice is an opportunity for us. Each day is a statement of who we are, what we’re all about. Are we there again? Are we consistent? Are we battling?”
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With that in mind, this looks like a roster that’s going to continue to experience considerable churn through next offseason and into 2026. Spytek comes from organizations that were built in a multitude of ways, but his preference with the Raiders is to draft and cultivate the vast majority of the team’s roster and then accentuate down the line when opportunities present themselves to add a player through free agency or via trade who can potentially stimulate another significant step forward.
You can already see some of those fingerprints on this version of Carroll and Spytek’s team. Among the swath of new talent is an 11-player draft class that is thriving under a clear reality: Those who make the team are going to be expected to play a role — and potentially a massive one — as rookies. Eventually that will roll into a 2026 draft class that already has 10 picks to continue lining the roster with talent.
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That 2025 class includes first-round running back Ashton Jeanty, who will be playing as monumental a role on the offense as he can behind a line that is still on a developmental and chemistry-making trek. Interestingly, Jeanty has cut a similar seriousness to acclimating to life as a pro as one of Spytek’s favorites with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — wideout Chris Godwin. Like Godwin’s entry into the NFL in 2017, Jeanty put in serious time locking down all of his off-field priorities before hitting training camp. That included buying a house, getting settled into his community and building a routine so that he’s not getting pulled in multiple directions when the season starts.
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Inside the Raiders’ front office, that’s known as walking into the league ready to be a professional player. And when it’s a trait of one of your potentially special players, it can create a meaningful image for the team to promote to other incoming players. That’s exactly what the Buccaneers did with Godwin’s example, and it’s expected to carry over with Spytek and his rookie running back.
The Raiders would like to thread the Wilkins release through that needle, too. Rather than reminding the fan base and critics of the litany of free-agent signing mistakes and trade blunders that played a part in scuttling past regimes, the coaching staff and front office wants the decisions made and work from this camp to punctuate the foundation that’s getting constructed.
If you want to play football and want to be about the team, you’re in. Anything less is just a waiver wire statistic that hasn’t happened yet.
