Las Vegas Raiders
16 May 2025

Rachel Gossen

From players, alumni and superfans to Vegas acts and live animals, this year's Raiders schedule release video had it all.

Over the last few years, NFL schedule release has grown to become a huge social media event for all 32 teams and their content departments. Some even have started calling it the "content Super Bowl."

With that in mind, the Raiders' in-house media team, Silver and Black Productions, along with the help of the marketing, creative and photography teams, wanted to up the ante this year by creating a skit for every single opponent, inspired by the classic "This is SportsCenter" commercials many of us grew up with.

You know the ones Arnold Palmer making an Arnold Palmer in the ESPN cafeteria, LeBron James' office chair/throne being taken by Scott Van Pelt, Lance Armstrong cycling to keep the lights on, LaDanian Tomlinson working in the mailroom.

After watching compilation after compilation of past commercials, holding multiple brainstorm meetings and writing way more scripts than we needed, the team settled on the 15 skits you saw plus an intro and outro to pull the video together.

After months of going through the ideation process, the team started shooting the week of the NFL Draft. Thanks to coordination with our PR and alumni departments, we were able to get Marcus Allen, Jim Plunkett, Ashton Jeanty, The Violater and Gorilla Rilla all in one day of production.

As we continued filming, it was all hands on deck as members from every part of the organization joined in as "actors."

The final push to get us across the finish line came 24 hours before we were set to announce the schedule as editor Ray Arzate placed all the skits in order and put the finishing touches on the piece.

It was risky attempting to shoot 17 different skits but one that was pulled off. I would say without a hitch, but you can't expect a big project to not have a few obstacles!

The biggest was bringing a minihorse and a goat to HQ.

Yes. The horse in the Denver Broncos skit is realand also the sweetest horse I've met. Shoutout to Jamie, Kurt and Killer the horse, who made his acting debut and is officially a Raider.

Making sure a horse doesn't run rampant while also not interrupting our business staff from their calls and meetings well, we didn't succeed at that last one (sorry, coworkers!) but I think they enjoyed the hilarity of a horse by their desks and seeing schedule release come to life.

As for the goat, he did a great Tom Brady impression, didn't he? We were amazed at how easy going both the animals were at being directed around.

For more exclusive videos from schedule release,download the Raiders + Allegiant Stadium app.

We had the opportunity to collaborate with some top Vegas talent in Penn & Teller and the Blue Man Group.

As performers in Vegas for over 30 years, Penn & Teller are a quintessential Las Vegas magic duo. While we had an idea in mind of how we wanted the penalty flag skit to play out, we aren't magicians. They put their own touch on the trick and it resulted in one of the most talked about skits among fans.

And the Blue Man Group...well, it's true, they really don't speak. But they sure do have some fun ideas and physical comedy. It was awesome to see them bring our vision for the skit to life while also going about their antics that gave us a lot of laughs, like catching an unbelievably large amount of marshmallows in their mouths.

It's always fun to get to be able to show off players' personalities in videos like these, which is exactly what Jackson Powers-Johnson did. He rolled onto set and settled into the office chair as if he's been part of the premium service staff for years. He also took the script we had and really made it his own. Who knows, JPJ might have a future in acting/improv like some past Raiders.

"There were a couple of takes. You see me eating an apple and that was not scripted," Powers-Johnson said onRaiders Roundtable. "There was just an apple on the table so I started eating it. I guess it was the person's [apple at the] desk I was sitting at. I felt so bad but it was such a good apple. But it was such a fun thing."

Check out more photos from behind the scenes of schedule release below.