There are a lot of reasons Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis fired head coach Josh McDaniels and general manager Dave Ziegler on Tuesday night. The embarrassing loss to the Chicago Bears followed by an ugly showing against the Detroit Lions on national television Monday, the complete mishandling of every single quarterback move the last two years, bad free-agent signings, growing player unrest …
But the rope that brought the curtain down on McDaniels and Ziegler sooner than either ever imagined was their misplaced and empty confidence. While each surely played some kind of role in the New England Patriots’ six Super Bowl wins over the years, how much became more and more of a question to Davis with every misstep they made the last two years.
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All the while, they assured everyone they knew what they were doing and their timeline shouldn’t be rushed. McDaniels and Ziegler had six-year contracts and the national media on their side, and what did Davis know about winning anyway?
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Well … he knows he wants to win, and after 12 years of mostly losing, he was desperate to try a new approach — “The Patriot Way” — after the Jack Del Rio and Jon Gruden eras. Davis gritted his teeth through last year’s 6-11 inaugural season and even backed Ziegler this offseason when the GM said this season would be judged on player development and not wins.
(That he would say this and then pose in front of a picture of Al Davis on draft night definitely hit funny. Mark Davis’ dad only cared about winning.)
Davis and the team flew back from Detroit late Monday night and arrived in Las Vegas at 2 a.m. PT. Most people figured he would give the new regime two more games at least — winnable home games against the New York Giants and New York Jets — before blowing everything up. But Davis faced the facts during that flight and on Tuesday:
The 3-5 Raiders are not winning. And he had no real reason to believe they could beat the Giants or Jets.
— Las Vegas Raiders (@Raiders) November 1, 2023
And they’re not developing young players. The rookie draft class — with five draft picks in the top 104 — has 11 catches, a sack and 30 tackles through eight games.
An offense with Davante Adams, the best receiver in football, and Josh Jacobs, last year’s NFL rushing leader, is putting up 16 points a game.
When McDaniels talked to reporters Tuesday afternoon at his weekly news conference, it once again became clear that he had no idea why his offense couldn’t score points or how to fix the problem. An offense that was hard for his players to pick up was easy for defenses to stop.
McDaniels said "the answers lie in the fundamentals."
— Vic Tafur (@VicTafur) October 31, 2023
Davis had called McDaniels “a chess player” when he hired him 21 months ago because he was always a step ahead of other teams when he was winning Super Bowls as an offensive coordinator with the Patriots.
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But McDaniels was not a step ahead, and neither was Ziegler.
Ziegler gave contract extensions to Derek Carr, Darren Waller and Hunter Renfrow last year, and then the Raiders cut Carr, traded Waller and stopped playing Renfrow. On Tuesday, the Raiders were unable to move Renfrow at the trade deadline because, league sources say, teams were unwilling to pay all the guaranteed money in Renfrow’s extension.
Davis had no comment on the firings Tuesday night other than his official statement to part ways with McDaniels and Ziegler “after much thought about what the Raiders need to move forward.”
But Davis will tell you he had no problem moving on from Carr after his nine seasons as the face of the franchise. Davis was all for it. Davis’ problem was the contract extension Ziegler gave Carr that not only led to an awkward two-week benching of Carr at the end of last season, but worse, had a no-trade clause that wound up letting the quarterback walk with no compensation to the Raiders.
The lack of direction — or answers — from Josh McDaniels left Mark Davis with no choice but to fire him after 25 games. (Kirby Lee / USA Today)Worse than losing a top-15 quarterback for nothing is signing a quarterback for more than $33 million guaranteed who throws nine interceptions in six games. Tom Brady was Plan A, but he retired and Jimmy Garoppolo was McDaniels’ and Ziegler’s guy from New England. He wouldn’t have the same problems getting comfortable with the offensive scheme that Carr did, Davis was told.
How much did Davis want to believe in McDaniels and Ziegler? Just look at the Garoppolo mess. The quarterback failed a physical when he came in to sign his contract and would need foot surgery.
Quick history lesson: Nine years ago, the Raiders were set to sign free agent guard Rodger Saffold to a huge deal, but he failed a physical even though he insisted his shoulder was fine (and would play that season). Davis sent Saffold’s family and everyone else home from the news conference and called the whole thing off.
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But this time, Davis went along with restructuring Garoppolo’s deal pending a healthy recovery by the end of training camp. Garoppolo said after the game Monday night that he is healthy and McDaniels echoed that Tuesday, but one has to wonder what effect foot surgery and a back injury in Week 6 had on a quarterback who does not look comfortable in the pocket or throwing deep.
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There was a much cheaper alternative at quarterback in what Davis could have accepted as a rebuilding year. Jarrett Stidham, another former Patriot, started two games for the Raiders when Carr was benched last season and had mixed success. Ziegler and I haven’t talked for months (I was deemed too negative), but back when we did chat, re-signing Stidham and drafting a quarterback early was a more attractive option than signing Garoppolo. But the Denver Broncos outbid the Raiders for Stidham (two years for $10 million, with $5 million guaranteed) and McDaniels and Ziegler really only liked one of the top five college quarterbacks, and Bryce Young was picked first by the Carolina Panthers.
The Raiders breathed a sigh of relief when Garoppolo was cleared medically in training camp — only to have the Chandler Jones saga go viral. The defensive end was mad at McDaniels and Ziegler and started posting some outrageous and inflammatory things on social media. He was placed on leave and was later released after the first of two arrests on two counts of violating a temporary protection order for domestic violence.
While no one could have seen that coming, Jones is also a former Patriot and leader who McDaniels and Ziegler vouched for. The $32 million guaranteed for a 32-year-old pass rusher was highly questionable even before Jones struggled at the start of last season. To make things worse financially, the Raiders restructured his deal in April to clear up cap space, and now his dead salary-cap hit is $25.6 million over the next two years while the Raiders already paid him most of the $32 million in cash.
The Renfrow, Carr, Garoppolo and Jones events overshadow what happened to Waller, but it all adds up for Davis. The Raiders traded Waller to the Giants in March for a late third-round pick — eight months after they gave him a three-year, $51 million contract extension.
Waller missed seven games last season due to a hamstring injury and is dealing with another hamstring injury now. But, like Carr and Pro Bowl linebacker Denzel Perryman and many others, he never really connected with the new regime. Many players tired of the epic-length meetings and the constant criticism, as well as the new regime’s monitoring of social media accounts and daily warnings to not trust the media. (Ironically, the two biggest leaks in the building were McDaniels and Ziegler.)
An NFL Players Association survey released in March — where 1,300 out of the NFL’s 2,200 players filled out a confidential report card — had McDaniels and his staff as the lowest-graded in the league.
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“Player respondents felt that head coach Josh McDaniels is less likely to listen to his players and keeps them for longer hours than other head coaches around the league,” the report said.
Players complained during last year’s NFLPA survey that Josh McDaniels held long meetings and wasn’t receptive to player feedback. (Candice Ward / USA Today)Waller’s trade came 10 days after his wedding to Las Vegas Aces guard Kelsey Plum. The timing was more than interesting because McDaniels accidentally leaked the news of the wedding to reporters at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. Waller was really upset with McDaniels when the Las Vegas Review-Journal posted a story announcing that the wedding was scheduled later in the week.
Plum tweeted that McDaniels was mad he wasn’t invited to the wedding, but she followed up later saying that she was joking. But he hadn’t been invited and it was a weird deal in the locker room and in the building — not to mention with teammate Maxx Crosby getting married the same weekend — and many players are convinced that Waller’s anger and the fallout were why he was traded.
(Davis owns the WNBA-champion Aces, and he was celebrating their second straight title with Plum and Waller 10 days ago.)
Davis was envisioning a Super Bowl parade when he hired McDaniels and Ziegler 21 months ago. The Raiders were coming off their second playoff appearance in 20 years, but Davis didn’t like the play calling in the playoff loss to the Cincinnati Bengals and replaced interim coach Rich Bisaccia and general manager Mike Mayock after a 10-7 season.
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McDaniels and Ziegler would take the Raiders “the next step,” Davis said. But the Raiders went 9-16 with the new regime — after making a seemingly all-in move by trading a first- and second-round pick to the Green Bay Packers for Adams.
There were several embarrassing losses, from losing to off-the-street Indianapolis Colts coach Jeff Saturday to being shut out by the New Orleans Saints and blowing big leads to the Arizona Cardinals and Los Angeles Rams last season to Adams slamming his helmet on the turf in the closing minutes on Monday night.
Davante Adams was visibly frustrated on the Raiders bench. pic.twitter.com/8wIEyZJleu
— ESPN (@espn) October 31, 2023
Davis gave McDaniels and Ziegler a vote of confidence last season, but in March he had a cryptic quote aimed at taking Ziegler’s ego down a notch.
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“Dave is young and has never been in this position before,” Davis said. “It takes time to learn all the tricks of the trade. I think the people he confides in might not be giving him the full picture because it’s so damn competitive. But he’s going to be doing great.”
Worse than the embarrassing losses by McDaniels and Davis’ money being set on fire by Ziegler was that there was no believable plan for success going forward. McDaniels looked more and more flustered by the day and said after the Bears loss that “football is a mysterious game sometimes.”
Not really. This marks the second time that McDaniels has been fired in Year 2 as a head coach — Broncos fans refer to him as “Hurricane Josh” after he went 11-17 in Denver from 2009 to ’10. And there will be a similar effect with the Raiders, as McDaniels and Ziegler overturned the front office and scouting staff and added a lot of former Patriots players to a reshaped roster.
Champ Kelly is the interim GM and Antonio Pierce becomes the eighth head coach, regular or interim, since Davis took over for his late father in 2011. He really tried to have patience this time, but with each passing day, it became more and more clear to him that McDaniels and Ziegler had no idea what they were doing.
And worse, they were in no rush to do it.
(Top photo of Josh McDaniels and Dave Ziegler: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
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