In case you missed it, the Kansas City Chiefs won Super Bowl LVIII a few weeks ago over the San Francisco 49ers. It was the Chiefs’ third Lombardi Trophy in the past five years under head coach Andy Reid and superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes. And the Chiefs did it at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada — home of their AFC West rivals, the Raiders.
The game was a bitter irony for Raider Nation: the Niners and Chiefs, two hated rivals, selling out Sin City in a thrilling overtime game. The Raiders remain on the outside looking in, and have posted a 32-36 record since relocating from the Bay Area to Vegas at the start of 2020. While Allegiant Stadium is a state-of-the-art venue, Raiders fans rarely outnumber the opposing fans, the Raiders have continued to waste money on high-profile coaches and draft busts, and owner Mark Davis remains one of the league’s most criticized figures.
There’s hope on the horizon, however. New head coach Antonio Pierce, a former Super Bowl champion linebacker with the New York Giants, got the full-time gig in Las Vegas after the team showed encouraging signs of improvement under his watch down the stretch, after the midseason firings of head coach Josh McDaniels and general manager Dave Ziegler.
It was a sign that Davis had learned from his mistakes when he spurned the respected Rich Bisaccia in favor of McDaniels after Bisaccia rallied the Raiders to a surprise playoff berth as the interim coach in 2021. Pierce will get the chance to shape the Raiders in his image, but with that said, the Raiders’ recent run of bad luck and the Chiefs’ constant dominance of the division have left a greater sense of urgency than ever before.
At the end of the day, whether they’re in Oakland or in Vegas, the Raiders feel like a has-been franchise in the AFC West, with only two playoff appearances in the past two decades despite having one of the most loyal fanbases around.
But how did we get here? And what can the Raiders do differently?
Part 1: Not their first rodeo – a history of relocating
Let’s back up.
The story, identity and culture of the Oakland Raiders is the stuff of football legend. One of the upstart AFL teams that started dominating after the AFL-NFL merger in 1970, the Raiders were the counterpart to the glamorous San Francisco 49ers: a tough, blue-collar Bay Area team that embraced physical play and wasn’t afraid of smack talk. The iconic John Madden was the face of the franchise in the ’70s; he and maverick owner Al Davis brought three Lombardis to the franchise.
But despite all the good times on the field, it wasn’t always smooth-sailing off of it. The lawsuit-happy Davis had a tough time negotiating a new stadium for the Raiders; they were playing in the Oakland Coliseum, which had rapidly become outdated as a dual-use football-baseball stadium. Davis maintained the future of the NFL’s stadiums lay in corporate press boxes and bigger seating plans, but he clashed with city officials in Oakland over renovations to the Coliseum, eventually relocating the Raiders to Los Angeles in 1982 during the legal proceedings.
The Raiders won Super Bowl XVIII after relocating to the City of Angels and maintained an active fanbase all over California, as well as elsewhere. And that was all in line with Davis’s vision; while he knew the inevitability of finding a long-term stadium solution was paramount, he wanted the fans to view the Raiders as a global brand — a team without a city or borders, so to speak. Or, if we were across the pond, “Raiders F.C.”
Davis had many admirable qualities; he took a firm stand against segregation during the start of his coaching tenure in the ’60s and he truly worked his way up from the bottom, being the only person ever to be an assistant coach, head coach, manager and owner of the same NFL franchise.
However, Davis’s micro-managing nature and tendency to make unintentional enemies cost him in terms of his negotiating power, both with city officials in the Bay Area and with NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle. Part of it was bad blood from the AFL vs. NFL days, part of it was a lack of capital on Davis’s part to organize good-enough stadium replacement proposals in Oakland. After they became the LA Raiders and won a title, their success nonetheless waned at the end of the 80s, cycling through coaches like Tom Flores, Mike Shanahan and Art Shell, while Davis publicly feuded with star tailback Marcus Allen.
Then, in 1994, the Raiders relocated back to Oakland.
It was a combination of circumstances that led to the Raiders heading back to the East Bay; Davis felt betrayed after not getting the luxury suites in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that he was promised when the Raiders moved to LA in ’82. The 1994 Northridge earthquake had severely damaged parts of the city, and Davis also wasn’t happy with having to continuously share the stadium with the USC Trojans. There were two other failed negotiations during that time, one for a proposed stadium in Inglewood back in 1987 and a potential deal that would have relocated the Raiders to Sacramento while also giving Davis partial ownership of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings.
Nonetheless, the Raiders were convinced to return after the city of Oakland promised $220 million in renovations, including a handful of new corporate boxes nicknamed “Mount Davis.” However, this made the field layout at the Coliseum even more bizarre than it already was, giving the aging stadium an even stranger feel. It also obscured views of the local foothills, prompting criticism from fans. With that said, the Raiders were happy to exercise a loophole with the NFL — they avoided a relocation fee because the league had technically never approved Oakland’s original move to LA in 1982, since they were entangled in a lawsuit at the time.
On the field, the Raiders were finally getting it together several years later in the early 2000s under a hotshot young head coach named Jon Gruden and a budding MVP quarterback, Rich Gannon.
Then came the infamous Tuck Rule Game.
We all know the story: with mere minutes to go in a blizzard-ridden AFC Divisional playoff game against the New England Patriots in January 2002, cornerback Charles Woodson sacked Patriots QB Tom Brady, forcing a fumble that was recovered by Greg Biekert. Upon further review, the call was overturned, and the Raiders haven’t been the same since.
According to several behind-the-scenes reports, Davis was furious that, in his view, Gruden didn’t effectively protest enough about the controversial decision that cost the Raiders the season and kickstarted Brady and the Patriots’ future dynasty. The relationship between Davis and Gruden soured and he was eventually traded away to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, where in true karmic fashion, they beat the Raiders the following season in Super Bowl XXXVII.
Bizarre incidents soured the Raiders during this time. They would hire assistant coaches who had been out of the game for literal decades. Their starting center, Barret Robbins, went missing the day before the Super Bowl against the Buccaneers and was later found to have gone off his bipolar medications and gotten drunk the day before the game. Linebacker Bill Romanowski infamously punched a teammate in practice. Veteran playmakers brought in to turn things around, such as Randy Moss or Warren Sapp, underachieved in Oakland.
Davis insisted on prioritizing speed above all else in the NFL draft and even drafted a kicker in the first round – an unprecedented choice – in 2000. Granted, Sebastian Janikowski was consistently one of the league’s best during his time in Oakland, but it was still a head-scratching move. He re-hired Art Shell in 2006, with disastrous results.
Davis then made the mistake of hiring Lane Kiffin, then doubled down on that mistake by drafting JaMarcus Russell with the first overall pick in the 2007 draft. And once again, Davis clashed with his head coach; according to sources, Kiffin was astonished by Russell’s arm strength, saying that the LSU quarterback had a “video-game arm”, but he saw red flags about Russell’s work ethic and was keen on drafting elite wide receiver Calvin Johnson, instead. Kiffin was overruled by Davis, Russell was an infamous bust, and Johnson became one of the greatest wide receivers who’s ever lived.
Even after Kiffin was fired in 2008 after going 5-15 overall, the Raiders remained cemented at the bottom of the AFC West standings. Tom Cable went 17-27 as the head coach from 2008-10, as attendance dwindled at the ancient Oakland Coliseum. Cable was eventually dismissed after breaking an assistant’s jaw during an altercation. Meanwhile, the draft picks just kept failing: offensive tackle Robert Gallery, wide receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey, linebacker Rolando McClain and more.
Davis passed away due to heart failure in October 2011 at the age of 82. Despite his many flaws, Davis had the respect of many people in football, and his pioneering leadership helped the Raiders change the game in the ’70s. But his stubbornness and inability to wrangle enough cash to finally fix the franchise’s stadium woes (regardless of which city they were in) proved to be a disappointing fact of Davis’s legacy, too.
Part 2: Mark Davis looks ahead
Mark Davis, Al’s son, essentially took over the day-to-day operations of the Raiders upon his dad’s passing; unlike his dad, Mark, promised to be hands-off and leave the football decisions to the football people. But problems remained: the Oakland Coliseum situation, the lack of continuity at head coach and QB, and constant missing on draft picks and free agents.
While Mark Davis claimed that he wanted to hammer out a deal to keep the Raiders in Oakland, political dysfunction in the Bay Area was stalling construction. With a net worth of a mere $500 million, Davis is comparatively, one of the NFL’s poorest owners, so he was trying to bring together enough investment to build a new 65,000-seat stadium in the East Bay, with potential partnership opportunities to help get new facilities with the Oakland A’s and/or the Golden State Warriors, who were hoping to relocate across the Bay to San Francisco at the time.
With that said, the younger Davis started looking to greener pastures…or in this case, drier pastures.
The Raiders gradually began to show signs of life in the late 2010s under young quarterback Derek Carr. After years of quarterback busts since the Rich Gannon years, Oakland was happy to have continuity as Carr developed under veteran head coach Jack Del Rio. A rare Raiders draft success story, pass-rushing nightmare Khalil Mack, also dominated as the Raiders surprised with a playoff berth in 2016, their first since the 2002 playoff run. Behind the scenes, Davis signed one-year lease extensions on the Oakland Coliseum while also pursuing options in Southern California and Las Vegas on the side.
Nearby venues weren’t looking like good options, either; the 49ers replaced the aging, but beloved Candlestick Park with Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California in time for the 2014 season. While NFL commissioner Roger Goodell publicly stated at the stadium’s opening that Levi’s Stadium would be an ideal home for the Raiders as well as the Niners, the two rivals never got very far in talks on sharing the stadium (much like the Jets & Giants do with MetLife Stadium).
In February 2015, the Raiders made a joint announcement with the San Diego Chargers that they would join forces to build a new $1.78 billion stadium in Los Angeles if both teams exercised the option to move back, while still attempting in good faith to get new stadiums built in their home cities. However, the almighty dollar ultimately reigned supreme, with the NFL allowing the Chargers the first option to choose when St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke offered a billion-dollar stadium proposal of his own. Chargers owner Dean Spanos relocated to Los Angeles in January 2017, shutting the Raiders out of the Southern California market.
Would Oakland step up? Or would Las Vegas swoop in and make NFL history?
A group of primarily private investors were organized by Pro Football Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott in 2016-17 in a last-ditch effort to try to raise money for a new stadium in Oakland that would include a surrounding entertainment complex. They met with Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf and the last-ditch effort was considered an attractive proposal, financially speaking — especially for Davis, who would be in need of partners with deeper pockets. He allegedly balked at the group’s plan, because they wanted to collectively buy a 40 percent minority stake in the Raiders, which was a non-starter for Davis.
Ultimately, the Oakland Raiders did, in fact, become the Las Vegas Raiders — but the transition was far from smooth. The announcement that the Raiders would relocate came in early 2017 and was approved by NFL owners in a 30-1 vote (the Miami Dolphins’ Stephen Ross was the lone exception).
And then the Raiders had to spend three more extremely awkward seasons in Oakland. Del Rio was fired after a 4-12 season in 2017, and then the Raiders made a bombshell announcement: Jon Gruden would return.
Mark Davis viewed it as a chance to mend fences; after all, Gruden leaving and then immediately winning a Super Bowl with Tampa Bay was a dark stain on the franchise’s history, but the two sides finally hashed it out. The plan was for Gruden — who had been out of coaching for a decade, but was still highly respected — to lead the Raiders back to the promised land of football as they packed their bags and left for Sin City.
It didn’t go according to plan. Not in the slightest.
Gruden went 4-12 in his return to the Raiders in 2018 and general manager Reggie McKenzie was fired midseason. This wasn’t exactly what Gruden was getting paid $10 million per season to do. Then in 2019, he blew up the locker room by bringing in the ultra-talented-but-mercurial Antonio Brown after the wide receiver fell out of favor in Pittsburgh. It quickly devolved into a media circus and Brown didn’t even last the full season after clashing with both Gruden and new GM Mike Mayock.
But in Week 15 of that year, the Raiders, standing at a mediocre 6-7 record, still had a shot to win out and make the postseason. And even better, they could give the long-suffering Oakland fans one more win in the Coliseum before they left. Then they blew a lead to the Jacksonville Jaguars at home and fell out of contention for the playoffs.
In the first few months of 2020, as COVID-19 dominated the headlines, the Raiders were moving into their sparkling new facility — the Intermountain Healthcare Performance Center in Henderson, Nevada. Due to the then-restrictions on crowd capacity, unfortunately there would be no Raider Nation in Vegas to welcome them to Allegiant Stadium for the first time.
Nonetheless, the changes being made bled over onto the field. Khalil Mack was traded to Chicago in the offseason in exchange for a slew of draft picks. The franchise’s first two picks as the Las Vegas Raiders were speedy Alabama wide receiver Henry Ruggs III and star Ohio State cornerback Damon Arnette — more on these two gentlemen and how they would haunt the franchise later.
Gruden’s Raiders started off decently, reaching a 3-2 record before the bye week and winning their first home game in Nevada with a 34-24 victory over the New Orleans Saints. But they lost five of their last seven and finished with a middling 8-8 record. Whether they were in Oakland or Vegas, the Raiders were the proverbial car stuck in neutral.
Part 3: The season from hell
It was a forgettable 2021 NFL Draft for the Las Vegas Raiders, blowing yet a first-rounder on Alabama left tackle Alex Leatherwood. The Reid-Mahomes dynasty at division rival Kansas City was in full swing, but the Chargers and Broncos weren’t scaring many in the AFC West. So there was a chance the Raiders could finally find their footing in the fourth year of Gruden’s second stint.
Then everything went wrong. Month after month after month.
In August 2021, as Las Vegas prepped for the preseason, CBS Sports reported that Raiders president Marc Badain, CFO Ed Villanueva and numerous other front office personnel had resigned unexpectedly.
A bombshell report was leaked in October 2021 involving inappropriate conduct by then Washington GM Bruce Allen. During the investigation of Allen and the culture of the Washington Football Team, email exchanges with Gruden, when he was then an ESPN analyst, revealed that he used racist language towards a black NFLPA president, among other inappropriate remarks. Gruden coached that weekend’s game, a tough 20-9 loss to the Chicago Bears, but he later resigned after the emails were published in mainstream media reports.
Some will still say that Gruden was blackballed. Mark Davis refused to directly comment on the situation and tersely said “Ask the NFL; they have all the answers” when questioned about the circumstances of Gruden’s departure, although both Davis and Mayock clarified that Gruden’s comments were inappropriate and shouldn’t have been made. There are rumors to this day that Gruden will eventually return to coaching, while his unlawful termination lawsuit against the NFL and commissioner Roger Goodell continues to crawl its way through the Nevada courts. Nevertheless, Gruden’s second tenure in Oakland/Las Vegas was undeniably disappointing: 22-31 in three and a half seasons, with no playoff berths.
Davis appointed Rich Bisaccia as the interim head coach, as the Raiders tried to salvage their season in the face of Gruden’s headline-grabbing departure. The Raiders won back-to-back games over Denver and Philadelphia, looking sneaky good at a 5-2 record heading into the bye week.
Nine days later, Raiders receiver Henry Ruggs III was involved in a truly horrifying incident — after an alcohol-fueled night with his girlfriend and a handful of others at a local Top Golf, Ruggs got behind the wheel of his car.
With a blood alcohol level of more than 0.161% (more than double the legal limit in Nevada), Ruggs violently rear-ended another vehicle in the early morning hours of Nov. 2nd. The car erupted in flames and tragically killed the driver, a 23-year-old woman and her dog, who was in the backseat. Ruggs, who suffered non-life-threatening injuries, was charged with DUI resulting in death and reckless driving. The Raiders released him less than 12 hours later and it’s unlikely Ruggs will ever play a down in the NFL again. Facing roughly eight to 10 years in prison, Ruggs is currently incarcerated at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City.
It wasn’t over.
As if the aftermath of the Ruggs incident wasn’t horrific enough — Derek Carr famously teared up at the press conference podium — Damon Arnette went crazy. For lack of a better term.
Arnette, who had character concerns coming out of college at Ohio State, posted numerous videos on social media of him brandishing firearms and threatening unspecified people in several profanity-laced clips. In the same week, he was accused by a woman of injuring her in a car accident, and the rumors were that Arnette’s threatening videos were the responses to the accusations (not exactly smart on his part). Arnette was cut from the Raiders as well. On January 3rd, another rookie cornerback, Nate Hobbs, was arrested for a DUI.
Amidst all the chaos and self-destructive player decisions, the Raiders somehow rallied. Rich Bisaccia was in an impossible situation as the interim head coach. A career special teams coordinator, Bisaccia was widely acclaimed by the players.
In 2007, an average Washington Redskins team went through their own tragedy after Pro Bowl safety Sean Taylor was shot and murdered in a home invasion. Despite standing at 5-7, Washington played inspired football in Taylor’s memory, somehow ran the table and made the playoffs at 9-7.
Similarly in 2021, the bruised and battered Raiders had been through hell, and somehow rallied to make the postseason for the first time since they moved to the desert. Bisaccia went 7-5 as the interim coach and the Raiders snagged a wild card selection with a record of 10-7. While prepping to play Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals, Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby, among others, gave Bisaccia a glowing endorsement for the full-time head coaching gig.
“He’s somebody you look forward to seeing every morning and just getting to work with,” Crosby said of Bisaccia. “He’s a great coach from top to bottom…with all the things going on in our building, we still found a way to stay together and win. I think that’s a big reflection of Rich.”
It wasn’t meant to be: the Raiders lost to the Bengals, 26-19, in the wild card round.
Part 4: Some people just don’t deserve second chances
There are coaches that people love to hate. And then there are coaches that literally nobody likes.
Josh McDaniels is one of the latter.
Not many other coaches get told “They’re talking a lot of s–t about you,” during a postgame handshake. Or spurn the handshake altogether in order to pump up the home crowd.
McDaniels was the prototypical wunderkind; around the year Y2K, the former Division III quarterback was gifted an NFL career thanks to mutual connections between his dad — Ohio high school coaching legend Thom McDaniels — Nick Saban and Bill Belichick. McDaniels began working for Belichick’s New England Patriots during their dynasty era, and by 2007 he was the hottest assistant coaching name in the industry. Although the Pats infamously lost a stunner to Eli Manning’s New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII, a perfect 16-0 regular season and career-best numbers for Tom Brady instantly made McDaniels a household name at the time.
McDaniels flamed out when the Denver Broncos hired him in 2009. Trying to build New England v2.0, McDaniels alienated his players almost immediately, banning music at practice and micro-managing nearly every aspect of the football department. He was caught publicly trying to shop QB Jay Cutler to the Patriots in order to handpick a QB himself (in this case, Matt Cassel, Brady’s backup). Cutler’s agent leaked the terms of the deal and Cutler publicly stated that he didn’t trust the Broncos to do right by him. Despite a 6-0 start in 2009, McDaniels destroyed a highly-functioning offense in real time. Wide receiver Eddie Royal, a Virginia Tech product with electric speed, was essentially written out of the offense despite a promising rookie year in ’07, while tight end Tony Scheffler and running back Peyton Hillis suffered similar fates. Despite being highly-skilled as an offensive coordinator, translating McDaniels’s philosophies to Denver was rocky, to put it politely.
Everyone else got sick of McDaniels in record time (and got sick of posting career-worst numbers) and national TV cameras spotting him berating and swearing at his players. Belichick could be abrasive, of course, but he had Super Bowl rings to back up his ego. McDaniels didn’t, and he was rightly viewed as a poser. The Broncos canned him after only two seasons. After that 6-0 start in Year One, McDaniels finished 11-17 with the Broncos.
He returned to New England and worked well in Belichick’s tightly-controlled environment. Everywhere else was a disaster. McDaniels showed his true colors once again by agreeing to become the Indianapolis Colts’ head coach in February 2018, only to renege on the deal within hours and decide to stay with the Patriots, leaving the Colts empty-handed at the altar. In response, McDaniels’s agent, Bob LaMonte, quit in disgust.
By the time Mark Davis came calling, McDaniels was insisting he was a changed man, spinning a heartwarming tale of how asking his dad for advice helped him make a list of what he would do differently if hired again. “When I went to Denver, I knew a little bit about football, but I didn’t really know people and how important that aspect of this process was. I didn’t succeed at it,” McDaniels admitted when Las Vegas hired him in January 2022.
It went off the rails almost immediately, and Davis was left to reckon with passing over a players’ coach like Bisaccia over a dictatorial weasel like McDaniels.
Flash-forward to Halloween 2023. As sports radio host Rich Eisen quipped at the time, it was a rare instance of a responsible decision being made after midnight in Las Vegas.
After lasting only 28 games in Denver, McDaniels couldn’t even match that in Vegas, going 9-16 overall. McDaniels’s old friend, general manager Dave Ziegler, came to the Raiders with him as a package deal, and Davis fired him too.
“The McDaniels-era Raiders were a complete disaster: an expensive and haphazardly constructed roster, heavy on ex-Patriots and light on difference-making talent, and a poorly coached team that was getting embarrassed on the field with stunning frequency,” wrote The Ringer’s Austin Gayle.
The Raiders lost a game in December 2022 to the Los Angeles Rams, who were long eliminated from the postseason and were starting newly-signed Baker Mayfield at QB after he had been there for only three days. The Raiders also blew the largest lead in franchise history to the Arizona Cardinals in Week 2 of 2022, losing 29-23 in overtime after initially taking a 20-0 lead. They lost to Indianapolis and interim coach Jeff Saturday, who had never coached an NFL game before, by a score of 25-20.
But it was an embarrassing 26-14 defeat at the hands of the Detroit Lions on Monday Night Football in Week 8, 2023 that truly sealed McDaniels’s fate. The sight of wide receiver Davante Adams slamming his helmet to the ground in frustration on the sideline became emblematic of Raider Nation’s headaches.
It was a case of Denver deja vu.
After initially selling him on his vision for the offense, McDaniels clashed with Derek Carr, and he posted 3,522 passing yards a year after throwing for over 4,800 yards with the Raiders.
“I had never heard Derek spoken to like Josh did,” one anonymous Raider player told Sports Illustrated. “He didn’t drop F-bombs or ridicule him, but film sessions with Josh are brutal.”
Josh Jacobs led the league in rushing (1,653 yards) in 2022, but in 2023 (the second year under McDaniels) he had only 805 yards after sitting out offseason workouts due to his contract situation.
Adams, who became a household name while working with Aaron Rodgers during his Green Bay prime, was stoked to reunite with Carr, his college teammate and best friend, in Vegas.
Playing in McDaniels’s outdated offense, Adams posted nearly 400 fewer receiving yards and six fewer touchdowns in 2023 than in 2022. Carr was benched for the final two games in 2022 to save salary cap space and later admitted that his wife cried when it happened. Happy to leave Vegas and McDaniels behind, Carr left for New Orleans a year ago holding many of the Raiders’ all-time passing records.
McDaniels’s prized QB recruit to replace Carr was (you guessed it!) former Patriots backup Jimmy Garroppolo, who signed a three-year, $67 million deal last winter after a semi-successful stint with the 49ers. All Garroppolo did was go 3-5 as a starter before getting benched for fourth-round rookie Aidan O’Connell. The man better known as “Jimmy G” is now expected to be let go after a single season in Vegas, in which he threw for a paltry 1,205 yards, seven touchdowns and nine interceptions.
“McDaniels is a guy who routinely botches in-game management decisions and struggles to relate to players,” Gayle continued. “Respondents in this year’s NFLPA player survey said McDaniels is less likely to listen to his players and keeps them for longer hours than other head coaches around the league. He gets himself into awkward situations with his quarterbacks, and will default to signing former Patriots, like he did in Vegas with Garoppolo and receiver Jakobi Meyers, as part of a roster overhaul.”
In short, Josh McDaniels failed (again) because he didn’t learn from his mistakes (again). And with Belichick finally moving on from New England, he has no one to save him. Good riddance.
Part 5: The Pierce era
Fearing a player mutiny if he passed over an interim head coach again, Davis did the smart thing and promoted former linebackers coach Antonio Pierce from interim to full-time coach on January 19, 2024. Pierce had gone 5-4 as the interim and had respect of the locker room. Importantly, he brought back the old-school Raider mentality: aggressive defense and tough players.
A former Super Bowl-winning linebacker himself who enjoyed a nine-year NFL career, Pierce is from Compton, California and grew up idolizing local rappers N.W.A, who were proud fans of the-then LA Raiders. It’s that kind of nostalgia for the old days that’s made Raider players gravitate towards Pierce, and even though he never played for the Raiders himself, he seems like he has the right philosophies, despite his lack of head coaching experience. At the very least, Mark Davis finally learned how to go with his gut and to listen to the players, for better or worse.
What’s the long-term prognosis for the Raiders? Well, despite showing flashes, O’Connell might not be the long-term future at QB. The most logical choice would be LSU’s Heisman-winning QB, Jayden Daniels, but alas, Las Vegas has the #13 overall pick in April’s NFL draft and Daniels will likely be long-gone by then. Despite Daniels having a long-term relationship with the Raiders’ coach — Pierce recruited Daniels to Arizona State in 2018 — it’s unlikely that the Raiders will have the draft capital to move up and select Daniels.
Back in April 2016, a full year before the relocation was approved by the NFL, and still hoping he had found the longtime home for his dad’s team, Mark Davis clarified that, despite outsider skepticism, he believed that the Las Vegas Raiders could become a reality. “Together, we can turn the Silver State into the Silver & Black State,” Davis said.
Unfortunately for Raider Nation, all Vegas has brought is the same mediocrity as before.
Letters from Las Cruces 