By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
After Raiders owner Mark Davis referenced the “chaos” of this past Raiders season, he introduced the duo of freshly-hired General Manager Dave Ziegler and head coach Josh McDaniels Monday.
“I think that now we’re just moving to the next level. It’s not a rebuild. It’s not a reload,” Davis said at the end of the 45-minute session at the team’s headquarters om Henderson. “It’s just taking this to the next level and getting to that Super Bowl and winning some championships.”
The Raiders finished 10-8 and made the NFL playoffs as the number five seed out of seven AFC playoff teams after former coach and Davis friend Jon Gruden resigned after the fifth game amid a personal email scandal.
Davis moved special teams coach Rich Bisaccia into the interim head coach job. The Raiders’ 10 wins included six walk-off victories during a season that was marked by the cuts of former first-rounders Henry Ruggs III and Damon Arnette for their volatile off-field behavior.
Davis said the interview with Bisaccia went for five hours.
But in the end, Davis picked McDaniels as the permanent head coach and his former New England Patriots colleague Ziegler as GM to replace former Raiders General Manager Mike Mayock.
McDaniels and Ziegler are close friends and it was a Patriots’ package deal. Both attended John Carroll University in the 1990s and they were football teammates.
Most of the 45 minutes were spent with the type of statements and words you hear at these introductions like culture and vision, though there were some interesting nuggets.
McDaniels was the head coach of the Denver Broncos in 2009-10, and it didn’t work out well. McDaniels finished 8-8 in 2009 and was fired after winning only three of the next season’s first 12 games.
“When I went to Denver, I knew a little bit of football. I didn’t really know people and how important that aspect of this process and mainraining the culture and building the team was,” McDaniels said during the introduction’s Q and A. “I failed, and I didn’t succeed at it.”
McDaniels then was hired by the St. Louis Rams as the offensive coordinator in January 2011. He returned to the Patriots in 2012. Here’s his comments about that episode:
Davis also offered a funny quip about the Tom Brady fumble that was ruled not a fumble during a Raiders-Patriots divisional playoff game Jan. 19, 2002 — 20 years ago.
The Raiders season ended two weeks when the Cincinnati Bengals defeated the Raiders, 26-19, on Jan. 15 in Cincinnati. The Bengals went on to defeat Tennessee and Kansas City to play the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl 56 at SoFi Stadium in LA Feb. 13.