Our latest episode of the Las Vegas Raiders Insider Podcast takes you inside Dave Ziegler and Josh McDaniels's regime so that those who know the past won't repeat it as Mark Davis faces a legacy-defining decision.
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00:00 Hi everybody, this is Hondo Carpenter from Sports Illustrated's Fan Nation Las Vegas
00:07 Raiders Insider Podcast.
00:09 It's great to be with you today.
00:12 Thanks for spending some time with me.
00:13 Merry Christmas to you and your family.
00:15 I hope that you are enjoying this season and I hope your Christmas shopping is going good.
00:21 I hope that you're able to keep your life.
00:24 There's so much going on in balance and that you're enjoying all that you're doing.
00:29 I want to take a quick moment before we get into today's podcast and just thank all of
00:34 you.
00:35 We are growing exponentially and it is all because of you.
00:41 Nothing to do with me, it's all because of you guys.
00:43 You are liking, sharing, subscribing, following, doing all those things.
00:50 We give you so much content but you're consuming it and we appreciate that.
00:56 I just want you to know that it's our pleasure to serve you.
00:59 From all of us, we just want to wish you a Merry Christmas and tell you thank you.
01:04 We got a couple of really exciting things coming that we look forward to you being able
01:11 to join us in a multiplicity of ways.
01:14 One of the things that we've been doing differently is if you follow our audio only, which is
01:19 this podcast but it's just in audio, you can find it on Spotify when you look for Las Vegas
01:25 Raiders Insider Podcast.
01:26 You can find it on Apple and anywhere you get your pods.
01:31 But just for the audio only group, I do a five to ten minute podcast in addition to
01:36 this every day, which is different.
01:39 It may be something that's not, it may be something that isn't big enough to do an entire
01:50 show on.
01:52 Maybe I don't have time to get to the studio or maybe it's just walking out of a locker
01:57 room.
01:58 A lot of times it's me driving in my truck with my son Dexter.
02:00 But whatever it is, it's just an audio only that you can find wherever you get our audio
02:06 only podcasts.
02:08 It's just extra information, it's extra Raiders stuff and it's 100% free like everything we
02:13 do.
02:14 Just want to make you aware of it.
02:15 But I just want you to know that I appreciate you and I'm grateful for all of you.
02:20 I don't know when you're watching this.
02:22 I am taping this early in the morning on Thursday and we have an article dropping at 12 noon
02:29 Eastern today.
02:30 So if you're watching it before it's coming and if you're watching after, you can go back
02:34 and read it.
02:36 And it's my latest deep dive article and I love doing these deep dive articles for all
02:40 of you.
02:41 I think it's important when you're a journalist to give people things that they can't get.
02:50 So for example, if I hire a plumber to come to my house to work on my house and he fixes
03:01 something really quick and he says, all right, the bill is 400 bucks.
03:08 It is ignorant when people say to him, well, you're only here three minutes.
03:10 He goes, yeah, you're not paying me for my three minutes.
03:13 You're paying me for my experience to identify it and to know how to fix it.
03:19 I have no issue with that.
03:21 I think, I think that's perfect.
03:24 And I have no problem with it because I'm not a plumber.
03:25 I don't know it.
03:26 Now, obviously our content is free and I'm not inferring that you pay for that.
03:34 But when you come to a journalist, our job is to give you what you don't have.
03:42 And so I love doing these deep dive articles.
03:44 I did one on the divorce between the Raiders and Derek Carr.
03:49 I did a lot of them during training camp.
03:52 I've just done, I did one that took you into the final days of Josh McDaniels.
03:59 And today's deep dive is one that I think a lot of people are going to initially be
04:04 interested in and some not.
04:08 And it was a deep dive about how Dave Ziegler could have saved the Raiders.
04:16 Now it's not an article painting Dave as the savior and Josh as the villain, because there
04:22 were some things that Josh and Dave both did.
04:24 And I'm going to talk about those in a minute that were just fundamentally flawed.
04:31 But there were several areas where Dave and Josh disagreed.
04:36 And I'm going to go into those top 10 of those disagreements.
04:41 And I think a lot of people will be interested.
04:44 I think some will be like, I don't care.
04:46 They're gone.
04:47 It's in the past.
04:48 But I think you should care because when you don't, those who don't know history tend to
04:57 repeat it.
04:59 And I think that Dave, excuse me, that Mark Davis is coming up against what is going to
05:05 be a legacy defining decision.
05:09 I think his legacy will be defined by this.
05:13 He's gone through multiple coaches, but he gets to Vegas.
05:15 He gets the stadium, gets the new practice facility.
05:19 The franchise is now ahead of the ton of money.
05:22 He had to get rid of John Gruden and he chooses not to keep Besace.
05:25 He gets rid of Josh McDaniels.
05:28 What does he do?
05:29 Because this franchise, especially you are defined by winning.
05:35 And so I think it's important.
05:36 I talked about this yesterday.
05:39 Mark Davis has several decisions.
05:41 Does he make the decision with his gut?
05:44 Does he have a group of advisors?
05:46 Who's he listening to?
05:48 Does he want an owner led team where he picks the coach and GM and both report to him?
05:52 Does he want a GM led team, which is not what he's had in the last two with Gruden and with
05:59 McDaniels?
06:00 Does he pick a GM who then goes and who's a football guy and goes and picks his coach
06:06 or does he pick a coach who lets him pick his GM?
06:09 And I think this is going to pull back the curtain and let you see some of the flaws
06:13 of having a coach led team.
06:17 And that's the whole purpose.
06:19 I have said it many times and I stand by it.
06:22 I like Josh McDaniels and I like Dave Ziegler.
06:26 They failed here.
06:28 I think both men deserved to be fired.
06:34 Now before anyone throws it my face, when I was asked several weeks before they got
06:40 fired, what was the percentage chance I said I would say, I mean that they don't get fired.
06:45 I said I would say a hundred, but it's the national football league.
06:48 So I'll say 5% chance they get fired.
06:52 Now people like to throw that in my face and I'm fine with that as long as you are fair
06:59 and the fairness is he had told them they're not getting fired and other people.
07:06 So and I don't think Mark Lai.
07:09 I think he realized the severity of the situation and made a change.
07:13 I believe I was the most critical of Josh McDaniels of all the media.
07:19 And I had people within the organization tell me that they didn't think that I was unfair.
07:23 They just thought I was the most critical and I was because after 20 games, you hold
07:27 coaches to a different standard.
07:30 But what does Mark do next?
07:34 Does he learn from the past or does he move forward?
07:39 So I preview in this article, not preview, but I go in depth on the 10 biggest mistakes
07:46 made by Dave Ziegler and disagreements between Dave Ziegler and Josh McDaniels.
07:55 And there are 10 big ones that if Dave had been the GM with that, where there was no
08:02 ambiguity on leadership.
08:05 Would have fundamentally changed this franchise.
08:07 And I believe had all 10 of them been executed and David had the authority.
08:13 I believe they both would be still employed.
08:15 That's not what I'm saying.
08:16 I desire both men deserve to be fired.
08:21 In this article, I talk about why I think both deserved it.
08:25 But I did talk about two areas where they were in agreement.
08:28 That I think they poorly handled the situation.
08:31 Number one, when Chandler Jones, when word broke that the Raiders were talking to him,
08:39 they hadn't even signed him and no one was talking.
08:42 You may remember it was a very secretive.
08:44 No Chandler Jones wasn't on the radar.
08:47 I got a phone call from a teammate of Chandler's with the Arizona Cardinals who shared with
08:56 me some very concerning things about Chandler and some off field concerns.
09:03 And forget those.
09:06 What about the fact, yes, his last year there, he had a lot of sacks, but most of them came
09:11 in one game.
09:12 He was a defensive lineman over 30 and you don't pay that kind of money to them.
09:18 The Raiders already had Yannick Ngakwe, who the people loved, the team loved, who was
09:23 performing well.
09:25 But nope, he was a patriot.
09:27 And I remember going to, and it doesn't matter who, but one of the men in the article and
09:33 saying to them, man, one of his teammates contacted me.
09:41 Are you sure that you want to, are you really considering bringing him in here?
09:47 And it was a decision that both men agreed on.
09:50 It was a bad decision.
09:53 It was a terrible decision and it ended up costing Mark Davis a ton of money and it ended
09:58 up hurting this franchise.
10:00 When they picked Tyree Wilson, they knew he probably wasn't going to be a hundred percent
10:05 or ready to really make an impact until next season.
10:08 They knew he would play.
10:09 They knew he would grow and get better, but their expectations was for next year.
10:14 Well, they were okay with that because they had Koonce and they had Chandler and there
10:21 was some feeling there that they could bring Tyree around circumstantially and not have
10:28 to rush him.
10:29 Okay.
10:30 That decision proved to be horrible.
10:34 That decision alone probably with many owners would have cost Josh and Dave their jobs.
10:41 So that's one that they were in total agreement on.
10:44 So you set that off to side.
10:46 There's just one though.
10:47 Remember, I have 10 in the story, 10 examples of where they disagreed, but that's one that
10:54 they agreed on.
10:55 And the other one that they agreed on was the handling of the Josh Jacobs franchise
11:03 tag.
11:04 Now, I said, and I stand by it, I would not have picked up Josh's fifth year option.
11:12 Now I like Josh.
11:14 I think he and I have a very good relationship.
11:17 I don't dislike him at all.
11:18 I think he has now played in a position that I would like to see the Raiders give him a
11:24 two or three year deal and give him a two year, $24 million deal.
11:32 Or if he's looking for a little bit longer, give him a three year, but no more than a
11:35 three.
11:36 But I really liked Josh, but the way he had played up to that point, he was often injured,
11:43 took himself out and he had had several good years, one exceptional year.
11:57 I would have, and it was a contract year, so I wouldn't have done it.
12:02 So I have no issues with them doing that, none.
12:06 But they franchise tagged him.
12:08 And you may remember, I told you all along, there was nothing to be worried about.
12:12 He would be back for week one.
12:15 That was factual.
12:17 Josh didn't dislike Dave or Josh at all.
12:20 He wanted to be a Raider.
12:21 They felt the same about him.
12:23 There was continuity there, complete continuity.
12:28 The problem was, is both parties, whether it was Josh's side or the Raiders side, knew
12:34 where the deal was going to end up.
12:35 And they knew that both parties wanted to be there.
12:38 They knew that.
12:39 They knew a deal was going to get done.
12:42 And so rather than let it drag on, they should have just got it done and had him in camp.
12:48 They didn't do that.
12:49 They drug it out, which is their decision, but they both agreed on it.
12:53 I think they handled that wrong.
12:55 Now I didn't put this in the article just because the article was over 3,000 words,
13:01 but there was another area that I think both men made a mistake on.
13:06 And I want to bring you in on what they were thinking.
13:10 And that's giving Aiden O'Connell the number four.
13:14 Now I want you to please hear me out for a minute, because this, anything that has to
13:18 do with Derek Carr is so polarizing.
13:22 So I'm going to ask you to hear me out.
13:24 And I think both parties will probably agree with me if you listen.
13:30 The Raiders don't retire numbers.
13:33 They don't do that.
13:35 And I have said this all along, Derek Carr did not leave here hating Josh McDaniels and
13:43 Dave Ziegler.
13:45 I have also told you that Dave Ziegler and Josh McDaniels didn't hate Derek Carr.
13:51 I have also told you that they, when the Tom Brady, when the decision to go to Tom Brady
14:00 was made by the franchise, and then Tom had to back out for personal reasons, and it doesn't
14:07 matter what they are.
14:08 I know what they are, but I don't need to report them because they're irrelevant.
14:11 Tom didn't lie and he didn't lead the Raiders on, and there was no tampering.
14:16 Tom handled it with impeccable integrity.
14:19 But there was great consideration of, man, we don't, we didn't want to give up.
14:27 And I wrote this at the time, they don't want to make, they don't want to get rid of Ziegler,
14:33 I mean get rid of Carr to sign Garoppolo.
14:38 And there was a feeling of, okay, we never say never, we don't close the door, let's
14:45 go back and try to reestablish with Derek.
14:52 And if they were able to, which they weren't, because at that point Derek had already started
14:56 talking to other teams and he knew their interests.
14:59 And I'm going to say this, I don't blame Derek, he didn't want to come back.
15:03 If I was Derek, I wouldn't have not wanted to either, so I'm not blaming him.
15:09 But they wanted to circle back.
15:11 Now they knew if we can get Derek to agree with it, the hardest person is going to get
15:16 Mark Davis to agree with it.
15:19 But they still had that process.
15:20 Well, it didn't work.
15:22 So along comes Aiden O'Connell.
15:25 He had no relationship with the number four.
15:28 Now there were some people that said, oh, they didn't even pay attention that it was
15:32 Derek's number.
15:33 The Raiders don't retire numbers.
15:34 You Carr people need to get off your high horse.
15:37 Then there were Carr people saying, why would you disrespect Derek like that?
15:41 I want to explain to you what went into the process.
15:46 They absolutely didn't know it was Derek's number.
15:49 They didn't.
15:51 And their process is, man, Derek wanted to go.
15:53 Remember, they had circled back.
15:55 Derek wanted to go.
15:58 And he didn't leave here with us hating him or him hating us.
16:02 And since we don't retire numbers, it's not going to matter to him.
16:06 He's on to his next team.
16:09 So let's give him that number and move on.
16:11 It wasn't because it was Derek's number.
16:16 They wanted him to have a number in a certain digits.
16:20 And that was there.
16:22 That was it.
16:25 They were woefully blind to not think it would have been a big deal to the fan base.
16:37 Either way, both the Carr haters would have embraced this.
16:41 Ha ha.
16:42 That's a big middle finger to Derek.
16:45 And the other saying, wow, that's a big disrespect to Derek.
16:47 They did not read the room at all.
16:50 I mean, you may remember when I did my deep dive article about Josh in those last days
16:57 of his hiring, where someone said they thought he was clueless on the mood of the locker
17:02 room.
17:03 Again, it wasn't people hating him, just that they weren't having any fun.
17:09 To Josh's credit or discredit, that could very, very well be true.
17:15 He's so centrally focused to his process that there are times when it's outside of those
17:20 blinders.
17:21 He's just clueless.
17:23 And I think they were just so moving on.
17:27 They thought, well, Derek's not going to be mad.
17:29 And to Derek's credit, he hasn't come out and said anything and made a big deal about
17:33 it.
17:34 And they didn't think the fans would carry their way.
17:38 They did not read the room.
17:40 It was a big mistake.
17:43 And that's it on Josh and Dave also.
17:45 Again, that wasn't in my article, but that was on Dave and Josh also.
17:48 It wasn't a slight.
17:49 I know for a fact it was a slight.
17:51 And I can tell you, I would know if it was a slight.
17:54 It was not.
17:56 It was a, we think it's a nothing burger.
17:59 And oh, it was anything but.
18:02 Again, a clueless mistake by both.
18:05 They didn't read the room.
18:07 So that's three areas.
18:09 I only have two in the article of where they were in agreement and screwed it up.
18:14 But 10 monster disagreements.
18:17 It's not all because there were several, but it's the 10 biggest disagreements.
18:22 I hope that you enjoy this deep dive.
18:24 Again, it's not a purpose to bury them.
18:27 It's not a purpose to try to get them back.
18:29 I think they should be gone.
18:32 But I think it's important for Raider Nation to see what happens when there's ambiguity
18:36 or a coach with more power.
18:40 And because as this franchise moves forward, we are going to be watching a legacy-defining
18:47 decision by Mark Davis.
18:50 Now I have said I am personally rooting for AP.
18:55 I think it would be peaceful for the franchise.
18:57 And quite frankly, I think the Raiders need some peace.
19:00 I think it would be very supportive by players.
19:02 I would not make the decision now or make it public if I was the owner, I would have
19:07 made the decision.
19:10 But let it go.
19:13 But I think that's the direction he should go.
19:15 But I'm not going to be critical of him if he goes in a different direction.
19:19 You may remember, I said at the time that Rich Passaccia was passed over, Mark has every
19:25 right to do what he wants.
19:26 It's his business.
19:27 It's not my job as a media member to tell him what to do.
19:31 I can have opinions, but it's his franchise.
19:36 But if it fails, I said on Raider Nation Radio with Clay Baker, and I have written it and
19:44 said it, he's going to be held responsible for the failure.
19:47 The Josh McDaniels, Dave Ziegler failure, they certainly contributed to it, but Mark
19:52 Davis owns it.
19:55 So if he chooses to move on, that's fine.
19:57 He owns it.
19:59 But I think it's important to take fans back to understand what happened, what happens
20:04 when there's ambiguity or a coach-led team, and so that you can move forward knowing,
20:10 yeah, my franchise would have looked different if a football guy had run it.
20:15 And it's also important, I believe, to have that understanding so you can understand what
20:21 you're looking for in the future.
20:23 I would not hire, and I've said it multiple times, a coach to lead a franchise like the
20:28 Las Vegas Raiders who had no head coaching experience.
20:32 So prior to him being an interim, I would have not hired Anthony.
20:38 I mean Antonio Pierce.
20:42 I wouldn't have done it, and I like him.
20:46 But I also said once he got the interim tag, it's now 10 weeks to learn the nuances of
20:50 being a head coach.
20:52 For all of you that don't want AP, but let's go get Ben Johnson, the offensive coordinator
20:59 for the Lions, or Eric Biennemi, the offensive coordinator for Washington, or let's go get
21:05 Frank Smith, the tight end coach, I mean the offensive coordinator for the Miami Dolphins.
21:11 If that's what you want, there's nothing wrong with that.
21:16 But if you want to get rid of AP because you don't like some decisions he made, they're
21:19 going to make them do.
21:20 There's a learning curve.
21:22 And to me, I'm going to cover and give a 20-game grace game period to whoever they hire.
21:31 They hire somebody that doesn't have the experience, I'm not going to call them out when he makes
21:36 rookie mistakes.
21:38 But to me, if you're not going to go get AP, then you got to go get a coach with experience.
21:47 That's my opinion.
21:48 It's what I feel.
21:49 You're welcome to whatever yours is.
21:51 But I think you got to hire a general manager and let them make that decision.
21:55 Now I've said publicly many times, I want it to be Champ Kelly.
22:00 I think he's talented.
22:01 I wrote about him after Mike Mayock was released.
22:03 I said there were three guys that I would consider for general manager.
22:08 Champ was one of them.
22:09 Dave Ziegler was one.
22:10 And I think you let Champ go make those decisions.
22:13 So I really hope you enjoy this latest deep dive.
22:16 I hope that you enjoyed learning about those three behind the scenes agreements that I
22:23 thought they got wrong.
22:24 One of them that's not in the article.
22:26 And I just really appreciate all of you.
22:28 I appreciate the fact that, again, you like, you share, you follow, you subscribe, all
22:35 of those things.
22:36 It allows us to bring you the best information that we can.
22:40 And it's because of you guys.
22:41 So Merry Christmas to you.
22:42 I hope you're enjoying your family.
22:45 Hope you're enjoying all that you get to do.
22:46 I don't know about you.
22:47 I had big plans for the bye week that were ruined because my wife got sick.
22:52 Got to take care of family first.
22:54 But I appreciate all of you.
22:57 I hope that you're well.
22:58 Thank you for listening.
22:59 We'll see you back here tomorrow, everybody.
23:01 So from all of us at Sports Illustrated's Fan Nation, Las Vegas Raiders Insider Podcast,
23:07 we'll see you real soon.
23:08 Thanks for joining us.
23:09 Bye bye, everybody.
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