Getty Las Vegas Raiders head coach Josh McDaniels with Mark Davis.
As an offensive coordinator, Josh Mcdaniels‘ track record is impeccable. He has three Super Bowl championships in the position with the New England Patriots and has widely been considered one of the top assistants in the NFL for years. However, as a head coach, he’s left a lot to be desired.
He failed spectacularly leading the Denver Broncos and was fired before he finished his second season. That was over a decade ago so the Las Vegas Raiders decided to give him a second chance. McDaniels took over a team that went 10-7 last season and made the playoffs. Eight games into his tenure, the Raiders are 2-6 and have given up 17-0 leads on three separate occasions.
McDaniels is now 7-23 in his last 30 games as a head coach. Many fans have already seen enough and want owner Mark Davis to fire him. That would be an incredibly quick tenure for a head coach who isn’t involved in a controversy. While fans want the coach gone, Davis doesn’t appear interested in making a change yet. According to CBS Sports’ Josina Anderson, a source told her that McDaniels is “safe.”
League source on the status of the #Raiders: “Josh (McDaniels) is safe. Don’t believe crowd noise. Everyone is disappointed, but no one is panicking. We all feel we have a good team, we just have to finish games better.”
This source is clearly somebody within the Raiders’ organization so it’s difficult to know how close they are with Davis. At the end of the day, the decision is his and he’s proven to be impatient at times as evidenced by the Jack Del Rio firing after the 2017 season.
Raiders Insider Echoes Anderson’s Report
It’s understandable why fans want to see McDaniels go. The Raiders went to the playoffs for just the second since 2002 last season but Davis decided to let go of interim head coach Rich Bisaccia. It’s difficult to know where the team would be if they kept Bisaccia but it’s unlikely they’d be any worse.
However, Davis made his decision and he has to stick by it for now. He came out last week and said McDaniels will be the Raiders coach for years to come. Team insider for the Las Vegas Review-Journal Vincent Bonsignore says that the coach is “absolutely safe.”
Between the Bonsignore and Anderson reports, it’s safe to say that McDaniels isn’t going anywhere yet. Now, if he losses to a mess of an Indianapolis Colts team that just hired Jeff Saturday as an interim head coach, then it might be time to reevaluate this conversation.
Players Should Be ‘Pissed Off,’: McDaniels
Fans aren’t the only people who are upset. Raiders players arent’ thrilled with how the season has gone and are letting that frustration show. Both Derek Carr and Davante Adams had strong words for the team after Sunday’s loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. McDaniels understands why his players feel the way that they do.
“They should be pissed off. We all are,” McDaniels said Monday. “Ultimately, at the end of the day, our responsibility is to one another in terms of doing our job, putting our head down and working. There’s only one way to get through this and that’s to work hard and earn the right to win. I mean, if we sit here and feel sorry for ourselves and hope that the outcome changes next week, the outcome will be the same. So, put your head down, work, do more if you can, and then earn the right to win. And then you try to build off of that and go and see if you can string a few together.”