McDaniels In Danger of Losing More Than to the Bolts
The 2023 Las Vegas Raiders are a different team from the one that finished the 2022 season, and it all concerns the locker room’s perception of the head coach.
The team might no longer be buying what Josh McDaniel has been selling.
Moments after I walked out of the Las Vegas Raiders' locker room after their embarrassing loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, it was clear this is not the team it had been since the door shut to end the 2022 NFL season.
The Raiders drove down the field after yet again starting fast and fading, falling behind by 16 points on Sunday night.
McDaniels' team had zero sense of urgency. The Raiders huddled in the red zone and walked to the scrimmage line—a colossal clock management blunder.
After making the touchdown and the two-point conversion, they got the ball back, and facing a fourth and four at the Pittsburgh eight-yard line, McDaniels unbelievably decided to kick a field goal.
Seconds after it spilt the uprights, an NFL coach messaged me, “What the F--k is he thinking kicking the field goa(l)!!!! Is somebody hurt? They aren’t saying that on TV? What the f--k.”
Even after the field goal, the Raiders would still need a touchdown. The move was unfathomable from a man many around the NFL once thought of as an offensive genius.
Via Optistats, here is how wrong McDaniels' decision was: Since the two-point conversion was adopted in 1994, the Raiders are the only NFL team to attempt a field goal in the last three minutes of the fourth quarter when down by exactly eight points with under five yards to go for a first down (or a touchdown).
The National Football League was set ablaze.
Fans don't realize this because they operate in the world of the fandom of their team, but the NFL world is small. No matter what they tell you about not listening, watching, or paying attention, they do.
I asked an NFL general manager on Monday morning about McDaniels decision, and he told me: "I like Josh. I have said a lot of good things to you about Josh. But I have to tell ya, it was an absolutely terrible decision, and had it been my coach, we would be meeting today about his future. Inexcusable.”
Another NFL team executive told me: “You have to ask why in f--k did he do that, and the moment you do you know any answer that doesn’t start with ‘it was a boneheaded mistake’ is going to piss you off. Absurd. I respect Josh and I have never said this about him but that was dumb. That was a moment that he just tried to out-think people. After Bill's (Belichick) handling of the OC position after Josh left, you can call that decision by Josh as true the Patriot way. Stupid.”
McDaniels' team refused to question him, but privately they did.
Moments after the 2022 season ended, both privately and publicly, players, without being asked, rallied to support McDaniels.
I had never seen anything like it in professional sports. It was genuine and sincere.
When I shared those sentiments, people clamored that they had to support their coach, but that was truthful; they hadn't turned on him.
But it was different walking out of the locker room after the loss to the Steelers. No one said anything to question McDaniels, but the room was different. There are many ways to assess it, and in this article, we will endeavor to assess the state of the Silver and Black franchise after 20 games with McDaniels at the helm.
We start with a conversation I had with a player and his significant other before training camp this year.
He told me then: "I want a ring; I want a ring so bad. Guys leave, or come here and tell me how other teams don't work as long and hard as we do," his partner grimaced in acknowledgment. He added: "I don't care. Josh has those rings, and I believe in him."
Now, remember, Davante Adams and Maxx Crosby are the faces of the franchise. They are not just friends; they are close. The other 51 men on this team look to them as men and players.
Adams is a man I highly respect. He is forthright, straightforward, and intelligent. After getting dressed in the locker room after the loss, I asked him, as a captain, what he said to his teammates after a brutal loss like they had just endured.
Davante is no stranger to controversy.
“I haven’t said anything," Adams said. "Sometimes, you need some time to process and figure out what exactly to say. … It’s tough because this is a really good team, and we have a lot of potential. I would say that. You’re not a good team until you can prove it. This team has some potential. We’ve got the players; we just have to figure out how to play together on both sides of the ball and stop putting ourselves in such tough-to-overcome positions.”
He added: “I don’t want to act all crazy; it is Week 3, but I don’t have time to wait around. It is not a personal thing, it is a personal thing, it ain’t just about me. It is not my mentality to sit here and try to take all season to figure it out. You use these games to try to establish an identity, and we are not doing things the right way to establish a winning culture early in the season, so we've got to do something to try and turn it around.”
One NFL Executive said to me in response to Adams' comments: “Every team, every coach, every owner, every player, every member of management talks about culture. That isn’t referring to a game atmosphere. That is about the organization, and I can tell you that Davante is among the smartest players in the National Football League. When he says culture, he knows what he is saying, which is a shot at the franchise. I suspect he’ll walk it back like Justin Fields did last week with the Bears, but he said it, and no one should misunderstand that. Davante is a great communicator, a generational talent, and he knew exactly what he was saying, and how he said it.”
I asked Maxx Crosby what he told his teammates afterward. His answer was very revealing.
“You can come in and do the same mediocre s—t, and that is the results you are going to get,” Crosby said, making his point.
I asked Crosby about Adams' comments about this team beating themselves, and he said: “The teams that win are the teams that don’t beat themselves. Simple as that.”
Crosby added of Adams: “He has a right to be frustrated, that dude shows up every single day, and he gets better. Me and him are as tight as ever, because that’s how we are. Day one. That is why he is elite, and he has a right to feel that way, and I feel the exact same way. We’ve got to stop beating ourselves.”
Not one player has told me that they have given up on McDaniels. Everyone knows that only three games into a 17-game season is unreasonable.
But they also didn't rally to defend him. The mood was different.
McDaniels is demanding and has humongous expectations on his players, something that he got hammered for last year in an NFLPA survey, and if your ways aren't working, that gets old quickly. Players don't mind working the process if the process works. Twenty games in, it isn't.
Against the Denver Broncos, when quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo threw an interception in the red zone, I told the fans that the team came off frustrated and angry but not defeated, but on Sunday, they came off the field down. The team shifted.
McDaniels was brought in to revolutionize the offense and return the Raiders to their winning ways.
In 2021, the Raiders averaged 21.8 points per game, 18th in the NFL.
In 2022 (Josh McDaniels's first season), they averaged 23.2 points per game, 13th in the NFL.
This year, they are averaging 15 points per game, 29th in the NFL.
McDaniels has one of the highest-paid offenses in the National Football League, his hand-picked quarterback, and the team is going backward.
This isn't personal. I like McDaniels; he is a good man, and I have defended him throughout the first 20 games because my job is to report.
That is precisely what I am doing: reporting.
After his 20th game, he has given us plenty of sample size, but he is failing.
Coaching errors, personnel mistakes, and the constant drumbeat of: "We have to stick to our process and go to work," don't endear you to 53 grown males in a testosterone-fueled sport who aren't seeing the result.
McDaniels' Super Bowl rings won him the locker room, but the mistakes of he and his staff and his failure to rally the troops could cost him a lot more than another loss on Sunday in Los Angeles.
How much longer will his team stick with him?
McDaniels can lose a lot more than games if he doesn't get this franchise turned around quickly; he could lose his locker room, which would be the ultimate loss and ultimately cost him his job.
You don't throw away a season with 14 games left. I am not calling for that.
I am calling for McDaniels, an 18-30 career head coach who is 7-13 through 20 games in Las Vegas, to turn the ship around quickly.
Coaching blunders, driving your players with promises of success that don't materialize, and the players you brought in failing are the soil that produces a unified team on the same page against him.
After 20 games, there is no more benefit of the doubt. No one is rooting for his failure, but he has to produce and produce now. He inherited a playoff team after the 2021 season. In 2022, five NFL first-year coaches made the playoffs. He was not one of them.
McDaniels' journey to this desert got him the head coaching job of the Raiders. His father is considered one of the greatest high school coaches ever, not just in Ohio but the nation. He was raised around and mentored by greatness.
His time with Coach Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots produced multiple Super Bowl titles, but how good have McDaniels and Belichick been without Tom Brady?
The pedigree is excellent and impressive, but like Adams said: "You’re not a good team until you can prove it."
We know that McDaniels is a proven great offensive coordinator -- his pedigree thrust upon him the moniker of great potential as an NFL coach. But in the spirit of Adams' words, you're not a good coach until you prove it. After 20 games as the head coach of the Raiders and 48 as an NFL head coach, the time has come for him to prove it.
Forget the fans, the media and the world; his team is watching. The players bought what he was selling. Now, he has to prove to his locker room that he can produce.
Sunday isn't about the Los Angeles Chargers, nor are any of the other 13 games.
The rest of this season is about his locker room, and they are watching.
This locker room follows Davante and Maxx.
On Aug. 10 of this year, Crosby threw the gauntlet down.
"Every single day I come in here, I think about winning," Crosby said. "I don't do this year-round to come in and not make the playoffs. I'm sick of that s--t and want to keep winning."
The clock is ticking, and the state of the Las Vegas Raiders franchise is simple: the locker room is watching. McDaniels hasn't lost them, but the goodwill is gone.
McDaniels must turn this franchise around immediately.
Owner Mark Davis might believe in him, but if he loses the players, he won't win.
What is the state of the franchise? It's failing.
Just Win, Josh!
The Silver and Black return to the road this week in Inglewood, Calif., to play the Los Angeles Chargers (1-2) on Sunday, Oct. 1, at 4:05 p.m. EDT/1:05 p.m. PDT.
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