Las Vegas Raiders Are (Still) A Hot Mess

Well, there it is. The Josh McDaniels era in Las Vegas is over for the Las Vegas Raiders. Finishing his stint 9-16 for the Raiders and 20-33 (.377) as a head coach. Rarely do you see a head coach start that poor and get fired mid-season, twice which could spell the end of the McDaniels as a HC experiment. Then again, Adam Gase(32-49) was given multiple opportunities. So was Rex Ryan (61-66). As bad as Jeff Fisher (173-165) was, he still managed to keep getting hired. The problem with most of the guys before McDaniels is they flourished in a non-dynasty capacity before being bounced around. McDaniels’ lone success story comes from a Bill Belichick/Tom Brady-led dynasty.

So here we are. Now the Las Vegas Raiders are left a shell of their former playoff-contending selves and are starting over again, in the middle of the season. The only difference is, this team is in such disarray and they missed their opportunity to make things happen. Mark Davis waited too long to pull the trigger on this dynamic duo. The NFL trade deadline has come and passed and the Raiders had bargaining chips.

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DeVante Adams is a star receiver and if Davis was kicking around the idea of firing Davis and GM Dave Ziegler before, he knew what this would do to the team the rest of the season. Why wouldn’t you want to load up picks for the next guy coming in? The same thing could’ve been said for Josh Jacobs who signed a 1-year deal and now will be free to do whatever in the offseason. they probably wouldn’t get as much because of that but when it comes to a team that should’ve never fallen this far, the more picks next year the better.

Let’s not forget the Derek Carr of it all. Maybe it was time for the Raiders to move on from Carr. Maybe it was better that McDaniels went with a QB who was more comfortable in his system. With that being said, neither led to a more complete offense. As a matter of fact, Carr is outpacing Jimmy G by 705 yards passing, 1 extra TD, and 4 fewer interceptions. Those might not be groundbreaking stats but at the end of the day, you still were at best, breaking even. Normally, when teams are willing to break even to move on to the future, they go with a much younger QB. Garoppolo is one year younger than Carr. They even botched the transition phase.

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So here’s where the Las Vegas Raiders sit at the end of the Josh McDaniels era. They missed any potential trades to rebuild when starting the season. There were no trades to be had at the trade deadline. They gave a mid-tier QB a key to the city to improve nothing. And 8 games in they sit at 3-5 with an interim head coach and finally transitioning to a rookie quarterback who was drafted in the fourth round because they thought they had their guy going forward.

This was more than just a Josh McDaniel failure as it was allowed to happen. They reached the point of no return and kept going. This has been going on with the Las Vegas Raiders for years. Their front office all the way up to ownership might need a change before this team is ever competitive again.