At around midnight on Wednesday, it felt like the clock had been turned back to 2010. Josh McDaniels had been fired as head coach from his AFC West team in the middle of only his second season. Only this time, it was with the Las Vegas Raiders, not the Denver Broncos, and it was in Week 9, not Week 13.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. And that goes for not just Daniels, who compiled a 9-16 record in his 25 games in Las Vegas, but the Raiders' organization, which continues to be an absolute disaster.
Before Josh McDaniels was roaming the sidelines for the Raiders and losing games, the organization was already a well-established cataclysm. McDaniels is nothing more than the, for now, ending exclamation mark to the sentence that sums up this franchise over the two decades or more that can't get out of its way.
Raiders problems trace all the way back to Al Davis
McDaniels was the fourth head coach since Mark Davis, the son of Al Davis, the pioneer owner behind the silver and black, took over in 2011, and seventh overall counting interims. And while you can call out plenty of reasons why, since that time, the Raiders have been an abject failure, there were remnants of his father's doings that carried over that keep this franchise where it's at.
Al Davis, though, was innovative, aggressive, and submissive to no one, including the league itself, but was also stubborn and like his son, refused to get out of the way and let more qualified people do the work needed to build a successful team. He was 82 at his death in 2011, which was the same year Mark took over. And yet, Al still seemed to be just as heavy-handed in the day-to-day operations even when his health was deteriorating.
The Raiders haven't been the same since they decided to trade Jon Gruden to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers back in 2002 for two first-round picks, two second-round picks, and $8 million in cash. As we know, Gruden would go on to win a Super Bowl with the Bucs, ironically beating the Raiders to do so. After Gruden, Al Davis then tried everything from reaching back into the past to going way too far into the future, making ill-thought-out, impulsive decisions at every turn.
For one season, Art Shell returned, who previously coached from 1989-1994. But before him, a total of four seasons combined for Bill Callahan and Norv Turner. Then came the hiring of a 31-year-old Lane Kiffin, who went 5-15 and was fired just four games into his second season. Tom Cable would last the longest in this run of Al's, who coached from 2008-2010. Al's last hire was Hue Jackson, who coached only one season.
Now, Mark is finding himself making many of the same mistakes that his father made in the later stages of his career. The 68-year-old now finds himself inside 12 years of mismanaged, misguided, plagued by misfortune, Raiders football. Don't forget that, besides all the bad coaching hires and impulsivity that this team has found itself in the middle of putrid luck.
The Raiders problems go further than ownership
Go back to Gruden's second stint with the team. He was hired back in 2018 to finish the job he started all those years ago. In fact, Mark signed Gruden to a head-scratching 10-year, $100 million deal. Gruden hadn't coached in the NFL in 10 years before he was rehired for the then Oakland Raiders.
Gruden's second time ended in a much different, albeit abrupt way than the first. The former Super Bowl-winning coach resigned when reports leaked of him using anti-gay, misogynistic language in emails that dated back 10 years. But even then, Gruden's best season in two full seasons was 8-8 with no playoff appearances.
Then there was the Henry Ruggs III unfortunate situation, that involved him killing a woman from a fiery crash due to driving his sports car drunk at high speeds that reached up to 156 mph. Ruggs was the first wide receiver taken in the 2022 draft, with the 12th overall pick by the Raiders.
Some of these circumstances, while unforeseen and could never be predicted, have just seemed to follow this team, like a haunting curse that's been laid upon them. But some of them could have easily been avoided with better people in place that could have come from better hires. That goes back to the man in charge, which is Mark Davis.
This isn't just a coaching problem or general manager problem — that of which Mark has hired three of now (Reggie McKenzie, Mike Mayock, and the latest casualty, Dave Ziegler) — it grows much deeper into the bones of this organization.
Over two decades of agonizing, disappointing football is summed up to that of bad business that stems from bad ownership. Josh McDaniels wasn't the problem, he's just the latest one in a litany of ones this franchise has been accustomed to making.
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