Getty Josh McDaniels (right) and Raiders owner Mark Davis
With 2:35 to go in the half on Monday night in Las Vegas, and with the Raiders facing a fourth-and-goal from the 8-yard line against the Packers, coach Josh McDaniels did what any reasonable NFL coach would—he sent out the field-goal unit and took the three points.
But when the national cameras in town for Monday Night Football panned up to show Raiders owner Mark Davis in his box, he appeared quite agitated. It was suggested by Internet sleuths and amateur lip-readers that Davis shouted, “What an a**hole,” toward the field. While that can’t be confirmed, and while we don’t know how, exactly, Davis was pillorying, assumptions were made: namely, that he was shouting at his head coach.
“What an asshole”… I wonder who Mark Davis is talking about?
Barstool Sports acknowledged some ambiguity but wrote: “I’ll be honest, I thought about trying to come up with some power rankings here of who Mark Davis could be calling an a**hole. But what’s the point? There’s one person.
“Josh McDaniels.”
On WFAN in New York, former NFL star Boomer Esiason was asked by cohost Gregg Giannotti whether it was, in fact, McDaniels getting taken to task over the field-goal decision.
“Either Josh McDaniels or to his quarterback (Jimmy Garoppolo), I wasn’t sure, I am not sure,” Esiason said. “I don’t know that he would necessarily do that to a player, I could see him doing that to the coach. Because he obviously hired the coach and he pays the coach. I would think sometimes ownership can get a little bit rambunctious when it comes to coaching decisions.”
Raiders’ Mark Davis Spotted Playing Airport Slots
Either way, Monday marked another entertaining day in the annals of Davis’ tenure as Raiders owner. Already this season, we have seen Davis take some taunts over firing coach Josh McDaniels, and we’ve seen him clap back at fans over McDaniels.
There was the in-game shouting mystery, but even before that, Davis went viral when a video of him playing slot machines at the Las Vegas airport went viral. In the clip, Davis is sitting in front of the familiar slot machines at Harry Reid Airport in a white shirt, before a woman and a large man come over and retrieve him.
And that was just before the Raiders faced Green Bay in Week 5.
Reposting the image, radio host Damon Amendolera wrote, “I have no idea why the Raiders continue to be a mess.”
Another re-poster, with the handle, “Las Vegas Locally,” wrote, “Billionaire Mark Davis plays slots at the airport just like the rest of us!”
Billionaire Mark Davis plays slots at the airport just like the rest of us!
Mark Davis ‘Doesn’t Give a Rat’s A**’
This kind of thing, of course, has come to be normal for Raiders fans who can only hope that the owner’s eccentricities don’t hurt the product on the field—or at least hurt it as minimally as possible. But for outsiders, it continues to be a source of great entertainment.
As Giannotti said during his broadcast, “I’m assuming he’s calling his coach an a-hole up there, it’s just the best. I don’t know, of all the entertaining things that the NFL has, I could make a case that the weirdest thing that the NFL has produced is Mark Davis. He is the weirdest thing going. The fact that he is out in Vegas now, too, makes it even better.”
But Esiason probably summed it up best in response: “He is 100% weirdo … I will say this in support of Mark Davis—he’s who he is. He doesn’t give a rat’s a** what you or me or anybody else thinks.”