Coach: Jon Gru­den. The 56-year-old Gru­den is in his third year of his sec­ond tour with the Raiders. In 13 years as a head coach, Gru­den is 106–102 in the reg­u­lar sea­son and 5–4 in the play­offs (one Super Bowl title). He is 49–47 with the Raiders, includ­ing 11–21 in his return.

Last year’s record: 7–9 (third in AFC West). The Raiders have one play­off appear­ance in the last 17 years (2016) and haven’t won a post­sea­son game since the 2002 season.

Offen­sive play­er-caller: Greg Olson, a long-time Gru­den lieu­tenant, is the Raiders’ coor­di­na­tor, but Gru­den has called the plays for his entire head-coach­ing career. He is from the Mike Holm­gren Coach­ing Tree, which means a West Coast offense fea­tur­ing quar­ter­back Derek Carr throw­ing quick­ly and accu­rate­ly. Dur­ing his first stint with the Raiders, Gruden’s offens­es ranked 22nd, eighth, third and fourth in scor­ing. In his return, they have fin­ished 28th and 24th.

Quar­ter­back sit­u­a­tion: The assump­tion was Derek Carr would be a short-timer when Gru­den returned to the Raiders.

So far, though, Carr has stuck around and enters the third sea­son of his five-year, $125 mil­lion con­tract. The Raiders can cre­ate more than $17 mil­lion in cap space if they move on from Carr in March.

Carr has 40 touch­downs and 18 inter­cep­tions play­ing for Gru­den and com­plet­ed 70.4% of his pass­es last year. He also had a career-high 100.8 pass­er rat­ing. The Raiders signed Mar­cus Mar­i­o­ta to be Carr’s backup.

Help­ing the quar­ter­back: The Raiders had three first-round picks in 2019 and hit on run­ning back Josh Jacobs, select­ed No. 24 over­all. Despite miss­ing three games as a rook­ie, Jacobs rushed 242 times for 1,150 yards (sev­en touch­downs) and caught 20 passes.

Las Vegas has stock-piled tight ends. Dar­ren Waller led the team with 90 catch­es for 1,145 yards and is a matchup issue for cor­ner­backs and line­back­ers alike. The Raiders draft­ed Fos­ter More­au last year and signed vet­er­an Jason Wit­ten this offseason.

The receivers left plen­ty to be desired, so Gru­den did some­thing about it, using this spring’s 12th over­all pick on Alabama’s Hen­ry Rug­gs. He tops the depth chart ahead of Tyrell Williams (team-high six touch­downs last year) and effec­tive slot receiv­er Hunter Ren­frow (49 catch­es as a rookie).

Three key questions

1. Why did the Raiders draft Rug­gs instead of Jer­ry Jeudy or CeeDee Lamb?

Speed, peri­od.

Rug­gs ran the 40-yard dash in 4.27 sec­onds at the scout­ing com­bine, speed he used to aver­age a whop­ping 17.5 yards per catch at Alabama.

2. What does the next step look like for Las Vegas’ defense?

The Raiders improved from last to 24th in points allowed last year and 26th to 19th in yards allowed. The next step will only hap­pen if they defend the pass bet­ter. They were 31st in yards allowed per com­ple­tion (7.8).

In free agency, the Raiders signed defen­sive tack­le Maliek Collins (Dal­las), cor­ner­back Prince Amuka­ma­ra (Chica­go), safeties Damar­i­ous Ran­dall (Cleve­land) and Jeff Heath (Dal­las), and start­ing line­back­ers Nick Kwiatkos­ki (Chica­go) and Cory Lit­tle­ton (Rams).

Those vet­er­an addi­tions will join four sec­ond-year starters: defen­sive ends Maxx Cros­by and Clelin Fer­rell, safe­ty Johnathan Abram and cor­ner­back Trayvon Mullen.

3. Will the Raiders’ pass rush be more effec­tive this year?

Las Vegas had only 13 sacks (17 few­er than any oth­er team) in 2018, but improved to 32 sacks last year (tied for 24th-most). A rev­e­la­tion was Cros­by, a fourth-round pick last year who had 10 sacks and 36 tackles.

The key will be Fer­rell, who bat­tled ill­ness (which caused weight loss) dur­ing a 4 1/2‑sack rook­ie year.

The Raiders signed vet­er­an end Carl Nas­sib (18 career sacks) to work off the edge.