LAS VEGAS (AP) — For a game between teams with losing records to end the regular season, there is quite a bit at stake — especially for the Raiders.
Las Vegas is in position for the top pick in next year's draft, a potentially franchise-altering selection the Raiders would clinch with a loss to the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday. The Raiders are guaranteed at least the No. 2 choice and could get the top pick even with a victory.
That's not at the top of coach Pete Carroll's mind nor his players, and regardless of the outcome this weekend, there figures to be plenty of change in Las Vegas (2-14), which brings in a 10-game losing streak. That change could include Carroll after just one season in charge.
He is a noted optimist and speaks about the future of the club as if he's going to oversee where it goes from here, and owner Mark Davis hasn't spoken publicly about his intentions in recent weeks.
“We’re playing Kansas City. They won the freaking division for 10 years straight or whatever it is,” Carroll said. “It’ll be fun to play them. Fun to go against (Chiefs coach) Andy (Reid). There’s no reason for us to think about anything other than playing ball. So, from the locker room, that’s what I said to them afterward, that we got one week to do something special.”
This is new territory for the Chiefs (6-10), who not only have ruled the AFC West since 2016, they have appeared five of the past six Super Bowls, winning the Lombardi Trophy three times during that span as the decade's dominant franchise.
The 67-year-old Reid ended any speculation about his future this past week, saying he plans to return next season. He'll have to find a way to get Kansas City back into contention, and getting a healthy Patrick Mahomes back early next season will be a good place to start.
The Chiefs will have a top-15 pick in the draft to assist general manager Brett Veach in his efforts to put talent around their star quarterback.
“Something to look forward to,” Reid said. “It’s not where you want to be, but it is where we are, and we’ve got good people doing the picking, headed by Brett.”
Chiefs quarterback Chris Oladokun will make his second NFL start. The backup to Mahomes and former Raider Gardner Minshew, both out with torn knee ligaments, was just 13 of 22 for 66 yards with a touchdown last week against Denver, though he did make a couple of nice plays with his legs.
Oladokun got only a couple of days to prepare for the Thursday night matchup, so perhaps 11 days to get ready for Las Vegas will help.
“We’ll get the normal week in of work and look forward to seeing what he does with that,” Reid said. “He did a nice job last week of getting everything together and organizing and was able to manage the game well."
An ankle injury probably will keep quarterback Geno Smith on the sideline, meaning he might have played his final game for the Raiders.
Kenny Pickett has been ahead of Aidan O'Connell on the depth chart, but Carroll said he expected both to play. Pickett will start.
“I don’t think that (Smith's) going to be able to make that recovery,” Carroll said. “We wish that he could, and I hate closing the door on any opportunity, but it’s going to be really hard for him.”
Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby wasn't pleased about being shut down last week, leaving the facility on Friday.
He returned on Monday, and while he still isn't thrilled about not playing anymore this season, Crosby said on the “Let's Go” podcast with Jim Gray that he's looking ahead to his upcoming knee surgery.
“You can look at it as, ‘Damn, I got to do this again and it’s getting old,’” Crosby said. “Or you can say, ‘No, this is an opportunity. I can improve.’”
The Chiefs expect to start Esa Pole, Kingsley Suamataia, Creed Humphrey, Mike Caliendo and Chu Godrick from left to right along the offensive line on Sunday. That would be their fifth and sixth offensive tackles and the backup right guard. And that brings the total games missed because of injuries by their starting offensive line to 35 this season.
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Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Chris Oladokun throws a pass against the Denver Broncos during the second half of an NFL football game Thursday, Dec. 25, 2025, in Kansas City. (AP Photo/Ed Zurga)
New York Giants running back Devin Singletary (26) scores touchdown against the Las Vegas Raiders during the first half of an NFL football game Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump and top Iranian officials exchanged dueling threats Friday as widening protests swept across parts of the Islamic Republic, further escalating tensions between the countries after America bombed Iranian nuclear sites in June.
At least seven people have been killed so far in violence surrounding the demonstrations, which were sparked in part by the collapse of Iran’s rial currency but have increasingly seen crowds chanting anti-government slogans.
The protests, now in their sixth day, have become the biggest in Iran since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered nationwide demonstrations. However, the demonstrations have yet to be countrywide and have not been as intense as those surrounding the death of Amini, who was detained over not wearing her hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.
Trump initially wrote on his Truth Social platform, warning Iran that if it “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the United States “will come to their rescue.”
“We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump wrote, without elaborating.
Shortly after, Ali Larijani, a former parliament speaker who serves as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, alleged on the social platform X that Israel and the U.S. were stoking the demonstrations. He offered no evidence to support the allegation, which Iranian officials have repeatedly made during years of protests sweeping the country.
“Trump should know that intervention by the U.S. in the domestic problem corresponds to chaos in the entire region and the destruction of the U.S. interests,” Larijani wrote on X, which the Iranian government blocks. “The people of the U.S. should know that Trump began the adventurism. They should take care of their own soldiers.”
Larijani’s remarks likely referenced America’s wide military footprint in the region. Iran in June attacked Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar after the U.S. strikes on three nuclear sites during Israel's 12-day war on the Islamic Republic. No one was injured, though a missile did hit a radome there.
No major changes have been made to U.S. troop levels in the Middle East or their preparations following Trump’s Iran post, said a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans.
Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who previously was the council's secretary for years, separately warned that “any interventionist hand that gets too close to the security of Iran will be cut.”
“The people of Iran properly know the experience of ‘being rescued’ by Americans: from Iraq and Afghanistan to Gaza,” he added on X.
Iran's hard-liner parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf also threatened that all American bases and forces would be “legitimate targets.”
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei also responded, citing a list of Tehran's longtime grievances against the U.S., including a CIA-backed coup in 1953, the downing of a passenger jet in 1988 and taking part in the June war.
The Iranian response came as the protests shake what has been a common refrain from officials in the theocracy — that the country broadly backed its government after the war.
Trump's online message marked a direct sign of support for the demonstrators, something that other American presidents have avoided out of concern that activists would be accused of working with the West. During Iran's 2009 Green Movement demonstrations, President Barack Obama held back from publicly backing the protests — something he said in 2022 "was a mistake."
But such White House support still carries a risk.
“Though the grievances that fuel these and past protests are due to the Iranian government’s own policies, they are likely to use President Trump’s statement as proof that the unrest is driven by external actors,” said Naysan Rafati, an analyst at the International Crisis Group.
“But using that as a justification to crack down more violently risks inviting the very U.S. involvement Trump has hinted at," he added.
Demonstrators took to the streets Friday in Zahedan in Iran's restive Sistan and Baluchestan province on the border with Pakistan. The burials of several demonstrators killed in the protests also took place, sparking marches.
Online video purported to show mourners chasing off security force members who attended the funeral of 21-year-old Amirhessam Khodayari. He was killed Wednesday in Kouhdasht, over 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of Tehran in Iran's Lorestan province.
Video also showed Khodayari's father denying his son served in the all-volunteer Basij force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, as authorities claimed. The semiofficial Fars news agency later reported that there were now questions about the government's claims that he served.
Iran’s civilian government under reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has been trying to signal it wants to negotiate with protesters. However, Pezeshkian has acknowledged there is not much he can do as Iran’s rial has rapidly depreciated, with $1 now costing some 1.4 million rials. That sparked the initial protests.
The protests, taking root in economic issues, have heard demonstrators chant against Iran’s theocracy as well. Tehran has had little luck in propping up its economy in the months since the June war.
Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. However, those talks have yet to happen as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have warned Tehran against reconstituting its atomic program.
Associated Press writer Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.
A woman shows a portrait of the late commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, on her smartphone during a ceremony commemorating his death anniversary at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
People wave Iranian flags as one of them holds up a poster of the late commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, during a ceremony commemorating his death anniversary at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
This combo shows President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. and Iranian Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Bilal Hussein)
