While the East Coast was sleeping, the Raiders (finally) fired head coach Josh McDaniels.
It’s a move that should not have happened as McDaniels should never have been hired in the first place. His coaching record and team performances clearly demonstrate his dearth of head coaching potential.
In a league where excuses around interview skills and Wonderlic test scores run rampant, it’s obvious that McDaniels has mastered the former as he has continually received chances that others didn’t.
McDaniels inherited a 10-7 Raiders team formerly led by interim head coach Rich Bisaccia in 2021. Bisaccia was handed the reins after Jon Gruden was fired as a result of the email scandal that broke in October 2021. To his credit, Bisaccia rallied the team and went 7-5 after Gruden started 3-2.
So the Raiders, who had moved from Oakland to Las Vegas in 2020, were in fairly good shape when owner Mark Davis decided not to retain Bisaccia and give McDaniels his third head coaching opportunity.
Yes, I said third.
The then 33-year-old hot coaching commodity hailing from the Bill Belichick tree was hired by the Broncos as its new head coach in 2009. In year one, the team went 8-8. But in year two, Denver stumbled to a 3-9 record and McDaniels was fired. He made a one-year pitstop as the offensive coordinator for the St. Louis Rams in 2010 before running back to the comforting arms of coach Belichick as the Patriots offensive coordinator.
In 2018, McDaniels was poised to become the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts but then made an about-face and declined.
“There are a lot of things that go into these opportunities and chances to advance,” McDaniels said at the time per Colts Wire. “At the end of the day, the best thing for me at that time was to stay. And it took me a little longer than I wish that it had to realize that, but once I realized that that was the right decision, I felt like I had to do that even though it was going to be unpopular.”
A few years later, despite Las Vegas heading in the right direction, Davis decided he wanted a shiny new face to go along with his shiny new $2 billion Allegiant Stadium. So Davis fell victim to the disorder ailing NFL owners, contracting the need for a young, white offensive coordinator.
And that’s the bias syndrome that hurts the NFL.
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