It’s 11 a.m. local time on the third Monday in May, and new Raiders coach Josh McDaniels is pointing to his left—over a shelf full of photos with family, Lombardi Trophies, and old coworkers like Robert Kraft and Tom Brady in them—and out the window of his corner office into the parking lot, with the Spring Mountains in the backdrop.
“One of the easy things that we’ve tried to keep in mind is we’ll get the best out of everyone here if they love coming to work every day because they love who they’re working for,” said McDaniels, sitting behind his desk. “That sounds so ridiculously simple. Seriously. But it’s the truth. If the players enjoy being coached by us the way we’re coaching them, if the coaches enjoy being treated the way they’re being treated, if the scouts and the personnel department enjoy the way that [GM] Dave [Ziegler] runs the meetings and gives everybody a voice, then when they drive in here in the morning? You should see this.”
The gated blacktop lot, adjacent to a set of three practice fields, is filled with cars, a long jump shot away from a desk full of binders and orderly stacks of paper.
