For any player fortunate enough to have his name called during the NFL Draft, the phone call that he gets from his new team is a once-in-a-lifetime moment. That will be particularly true for former Texas Tech offensive lineman Caleb Rogers, who had an unfortunate gaffe when talking to his new head coach on draft night.
Selected by the Las Vegas Raiders in the third round of this year's draft, Rogers was the first of two Red Raiders taken in the seven-round draft. (The other was Tahj Brooks, who went to the Cincinnati Bengals in the sixth round.).
Texas Tech fans know that Rogers is an emotional, outgoing person. During his five years in Lubbock, he was usually the player who was seen getting his teammates fired up before games, and he even attended numerous basketball games where he would often take the house microphone and work the student section into a frenzy.
Therefore, it should be no surprise that he had quite the emotional reaction to the news that he had been drafted by the Raiders. In fact, he was so thrilled that, during his celebration, he accidentally hung up on his new head coach, the legendary Pete Carroll.
When the #Raiders drafted @calebrogers76, the call with @PeteCarroll didn't go as planned for Rogers. He said of the call: "Hopefully it's a funny story we can tell sometime in the future when I've been a Raider for 12 years and I'm leaving a legacy." #NFLDraft @VegasNation pic.twitter.com/8t39XmB8ui
— Heidi Fang (@HeidiFang) April 26, 2025
"Caleb was so excited that he hung up on coach," Raiders GM John Spytek said.
"He's in trouble with me, I want you to know that," Carroll then joked.
Later, in a phone interview with Vegas Nation, Rogers explained what took place and how he managed to make a dubious first impression on his new team.
"I grabbed my phone and picked it up," he said, "and my friends couldn't help but start yelling, so I had to run away from everybody, and I couldn't really hear everybody...I'm talking on the phone, I'm trying to hear, and I said 'Send me the playbook tomorrow, put me on a plane tomorrow, I'm ready to be a Raider, I'm ready to be a part of this organization'.
"I thought the phone call was over. I felt horrible. The o-line coach called me, and Carroll was with him, and he said, 'You hung up on me.'"
If there is any coach in the NFL who can understand and appreciate how a young player could be a bit overexcited after being drafted, it would be the affable Carroll, who is known as one of the best players' coaches in the game. Certainly, he had to have found the incident amusing.
Rogers also found the humor in the situation. In fact, he hopes that it will make for a good story down the road.
"It's hopefully a funny story that we can tell sometime here in the future," he said, "when I've been a Riader for 12 years and I'm leaving a legacy and it all started on me hanging up on the head coach before I even got there."
Because they seem to be cut from the same cloth, Carroll and Rogers will likely get along extremely well. Hopefully, this draft-night mix-up will be a humorous beginning in a relationship that will propel Rogers to a fantastic NFL career.