The Las Vegas Raiders continue to make mistakes with their head coaching hires. Hiring Pete Carroll last year was a logical move, but it blew up in their face.
The Raiders have now tasked minority owner Tom Brady and general manager John Spytek with finding the next head coach. This means that the process could be different than what Mark Davis has done in the past.
Back in 2022, Davis decided to hire longtime New England Patriots assistant Josh McDaniels to be the head coach. While he failed in the same position with the Denver Broncos, the hope was that he learned from his mistakes.
Unfortunately, his Raiders tenure was so bad that some players basically pressured Davis to fire him before finishing his second season. McDaniels is now back calling plays for a Patriots team that won 14 games and had the second-best scoring offense in the NFL.
Brady and McDaniels are very close, having worked together in New England for nearly two decades. According to Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio, there are some people around the NFL who believe Brady might push to bring McDaniels back to Las Vegas.
“I don’t know if anybody truly believes it would happen, but I keep hearing people say that they think if Tom Brady is calling the shots in Las Vegas, the guy he would want to hire is Josh McDaniels,” Florio said.
Raiders Have Brought Back Former Head Coaches Before
On the surface, the idea of bringing back McDaniels as the head coach seems highly unlikely. However, the Raiders have moved on from and then brought back two former head coaches before. They did it with Art Shell and Jon Gruden.
Florio doesn’t think it’s the worst idea he’s ever heard.
“When you are as bad as any team has been for the past 23 years, why not get nuts? … Let’s do something creative, let’s do something outside the box,” Florio said. “If Brady would hire him without the fact that he had already been the Raiders head coach and didn’t work out, why should that stop him from bringing him back? It wouldn’t be the first time a Raiders head coach came back for a second go-around.”
The thing with Gruden and Shell was that they actually won with the Raiders during their first stints before getting fired. McDaniels went 9-16 before getting fired.
Would Raiders Actually Consider McDaniels?
McDaniels is proving again that he is a very good offenisve mind, but once again, he’s only doing it with the Patriots. Yes, it’s a different head coach now, but he has never proven he can coach outside of New England.
It would be very hard for the Raiders to justify bringing him back. The team was immediately better the second he left the building. There are still a lot of players on the team from his tenure, so that would also be strange for them. It’s just very difficult to see how this could work, and why would McDaniels want to deal with that circus again?
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