After His Debut Season, Josh McDaniels and the Raiders Are Focusing on the Margins

The coach is back in Las Vegas for a second season, with a revamped focus on bringing in and developing leaders to fortify his locker room.

Raiders coach Josh McDaniels and I were discussing the rights and wrongs of his first year in Las Vegas, and, at one point, in explaining how they’d fixed the latter, he pointed to a ceiling-to-floor whiteboard facing his desk.

On it was his remedy, in the form of characteristics he’s loading his locker room with.

“Smart, tough, mature, explosive,” he said, reading off the wall. “Eliminate distractions, and then tough, smart, mature, explosive. Right below that, love football, work hard, put the team first. That’s ultimately my vision for a team that’s going to be competitive over and over, that’s what [those teams] end up being. The distractions, as you know, if you have a bunch of them, it’s hard to navigate all that and win.

“The tough part is being physical and running the ball. And smart, mature guys, they help you in situational football if they understand what’s going on and they can help others.”

That is where the Raiders are, coming off McDaniels’s and GM Dave Ziegler’s first season.

No, 6–11 wasn’t what they were expecting. And yet, as the two saw it, there were signs all over that the rebuild is further along than you might think. Nine of Vegas’s 11 losses were by seven or fewer points, and all that happened while the Raiders ranked last in the NFL in takeaways, threw the fourth-most interceptions and came in last in punt-return average.

In short, they lost on the margins. Deficiencies in those areas, to be sure, are even tougher to swallow for alums of a Patriots program that built a dynasty owning them. So this offseason, in McDaniels’s words, the Raiders “tried to get better in every margin.”

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McDaniels spent 19 seasons with the Patriots, including 13 as offensive coordinator :: Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports

In a certain way, that explained the scene at Sunday practice. The Raiders spent a significant amount of time in red zone drills, and, during that work, the coach had his toes on the end line, under the goal post and behind the defense. Not far away, offensive coordinator Mick Lombardi used a walkie-talkie to radio plays to the quarterbacks.

"I didn’t call one play today,” McDaniels says. “We’ve done that throughout the course of the offseason. I didn’t call much in the offseason at all.”

McDaniels will call when the season starts. But for now, doing it this way helps in two ways. One, it shows trust in Lombardi and helps to further develop his offensive coaches, which will make the staff deeper on that side. Two, it allows for the head coach to take a big-picture view, better tie up every loose end in the operation and lock down the details.

“There’s an element of, O.K., I’m able to sit back, I was behind the defense a lot today, just hearing the communication, then after the period, come here for a minute and help out,” McDaniels says. “I think that’s my role. I need to be able to do that more, not because we don’t have great coaches on the defensive side. I love what we have going on. It’s just, if I have anything that can help, I have to do it. How are we practicing? How are we working?”

Then there’s simply the types of players he and Ziegler are acquiring and having another offseason to stock the cupboard with those who inherently possess the critical characteristics.

Robert Spillane, who came over from the Steelers, has brought it to the linebacker room; Marcus Epps, signed from the NFC champion Eagles, to the safety room; former Patriot Jakobi Meyers has added to what the Raiders already have in the receiver room; and new quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo certainly knows what McDaniels and Ziegler expect.

So while last year the Raiders went shopping for top-of-the-roster, big-box items like Davante Adams and Chandler Jones, this time around they are focusing on building up the middle of the team with players who they hope will become torch bearers.

“We drafted seven captains,” McDaniels says. “We weren’t going out there saying we have to draft captains. But the reality is we were trying to find a way where we could get that part of our team to try to take a step forward."

The steps forward are happening, too, with young incumbents in key spots. Playing next to Spillane has helped Divine Deablo. Ditto for second-round pick Tre’von Moehrig, who gets to learn from Epps. With those two examples, and others, there’s been a multiplying effect that’ll help on those margins, and also in shoring up a weakness (in this case the middle of the defense) of a year ago.

Which ultimately should give the Raiders a better, smarter team.

Moehrig has totaled 55 sacks in each of his two seasons with the Raiders :: Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports

“You saw us in the two-minute a bunch at the end today,” McDaniels says. “You saw us in the situational plays in the kicking game. You can win those scenarios if you’re prepared really well, and you know what you want to do and you know what the opponent’s likely to do. Then you can just play fast and you’re not out there thinking. If you can get 11 guys who know what to expect, know the why, to me, now you’re playing ahead of the game.

“I always thought that that was one of the things that we had attempted to do [in New England] and we’re attempting to do here. I’m not speaking about anybody that came here before us. I don’t know what they did. I just know that close games in the NFL are won or lost. You can lose one just as quickly as you can win one in terms of making a bad decision or not making a play in the right scenario.”

Another sign of the focus on details: the hire of a dedicated returners coach, in Danny Amendola, a role that McDaniels once saw filled adeptly by Troy Brown in Foxborough. The idea there was that it’s such a specialized thing, and so important to the game, that getting someone who’s done it is necessary.

And it’s just another example of where the Raiders think the difference between 11 losses and as many wins could come.

“We know the importance of it,” McDaniels says. “[Getting] Peters—Marcus Peters is a super-aware player. There’s just an element of maturity, wisdom. Wisdom comes from experience, and then you have to really understand how important it is week after week if you want to be good at it. That s---’s not an accident. Winning situational football against Sean Payton in Week 1 is going to be different than winning it against [Sean] McDermott in Week 2, which is going to be different than winning it against [Mike] Tomlin in Week 3.

“They’re all huge challenges. They’re all going to pose different problems. But you either win them or you don’t. If you lose them, you’re not going to be very good.”

In that area, given how much work they’ve poured into it, McDaniels is pretty confident the Raiders are going to be better.

Which is why, quietly, he thinks the team should be, too.