The Las Vegas Raiders have a decision to make with their head coaching position. After a drama-filled year to open with Jon Gruden, the players have since gravitated towards interim Rich Bisaccia.
One anonymous Raiders veteran reportedly claims that Gruden wouldn't have put the team in the same position to even make the playoffs, which the team was able to do this season. He claims that Gruden would run his players ragged, which strongly affected their vitality late in the campaign.
Via Michael Silver of Bally Sports:
“We didn’t have Gruden grinding us late in the year,” one Raiders veteran told me. “Gruden would kill us, and we would fall apart. The reason this team played so well down the stretch is that Rich listened to the players and took it easy over the back half of the season.”
The records speak for themselves. During the 2020 season, the Raiders were sitting pretty with a 6-3 record through Week 10 but closed the season 2-5 and missed the playoffs. In 2019, they stood at 6-4 through Week 11 and won just one game in their final six the rest of the way.
In contrast to that, Rich Bisaccia led the Raiders to a 4-0 record in their final games of the season to enable them to sneak into the postseason. While they didn't get far, just making it into the playoffs was a feat they didn't accomplish in Jon Gruden's three full seasons coaching the team since 2018.
Quarterback Derek Carr was vocal in his support of Bisaccia after their playoff ouster against the Cincinnati Bengals.
“I think we can all think that he's the right guy,” the Raiders QB told reporters after the game. “He's proven that people listen to him. Our team listens to him. And I love him so much, I'm thankful for him. All those things will be decisions that I don't make, (that) I don't get to make. I just play quarterback, but with everything that went on, if you really look at what happened, all the pieces missing, everything that changed, yeah, he held it together.”
It remains to be seen if Rich Bisaccia will get his interim label removed as the Raiders head coach or if they'll move on. But it's clear that his players wouldn't mind having him stick around.
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