Some time between an incompetent Monday Night Football loss to the Lions and 12:50 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday, Raiders owner Mark Davis decided he was through being told to build a football team.
To buttress the slow but budding progress of the Jon Gruden era, Davis turned to the Patriot Way, bringing both Josh McDaniels and Dave Ziegler from New England in 2022. From one force of personality, to a kind of clique of personality, the Raiders handed over the best collection of personnel the franchise had had since the turn of the millennium. The result was one playoff appearance, which was, ironically, spearheaded by the warmhearted interim head coach, Rich Bisaccia.
McDaniels won nine games in 25 tries. Some of his losses, such as dropping a game to Jeff Saturday in the television analyst’s first game as a head coach, and dropping a Thursday night game to Baker Mayfield and the Rams, with Mayfield having just gotten off a plane after being claimed off waivers Tuesday, left scars that may have been unhealable. Those kinds of losses counterbalanced any sort of momentum McDaniels was able to develop. Trading for Davante Adams set the franchise up with the expectation of immediate contention. Instead, the Raiders bungled the quarterback transition from Derek Carr to whomever their primary target was in 2023, to Jimmy Garoppolo, a player familiar with McDaniels but with a heightened risk of injury.
