While the East Coast was sleeping, the Raiders (finally) fired head coach Josh McDaniels.
It’s a move that should not have happened as McDaniels should never have been hired in the first place. His coaching record and team performances clearly demonstrate his dearth of head coaching potential.
In a league where excuses around interview skills and Wonderlic test scores run rampant, it’s obvious that McDaniels has mastered the former as he has continually received chances that others didn’t.
McDaniels inherited a 10-7 Raiders team formerly led by interim head coach Rich Bisaccia in 2021. Bisaccia was handed the reins after Jon Gruden was fired as a result of the email scandal that broke in October 2021. To his credit, Bisaccia rallied the team and went 7-5 after Gruden started 3-2.
So the Raiders, who had moved from Oakland to Las Vegas in 2020, were in fairly good shape when owner Mark Davis decided not to retain Bisaccia and give McDaniels his third head coaching opportunity.
Yes, I said third.
The then 33-year-old hot coaching commodity hailing from the Bill Belichick tree was hired by the Broncos as its new head coach in 2009. In year one, the team went 8-8. But in year two, Denver stumbled to a 3-9 record and McDaniels was fired. He made a one-year pitstop as the offensive coordinator for the St. Louis Rams in 2010 before running back to the comforting arms of coach Belichick as the Patriots offensive coordinator.
In 2018, McDaniels was poised to become the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts but then made an about-face and declined.
“There are a lot of things that go into these opportunities and chances to advance,” McDaniels said at the time per Colts Wire. “At the end of the day, the best thing for me at that time was to stay. And it took me a little longer than I wish that it had to realize that, but once I realized that that was the right decision, I felt like I had to do that even though it was going to be unpopular.”
A few years later, despite Las Vegas heading in the right direction, Davis decided he wanted a shiny new face to go along with his shiny new $2 billion Allegiant Stadium. So Davis fell victim to the disorder ailing NFL owners, contracting the need for a young, white offensive coordinator.
And that’s the bias syndrome that hurts the NFL.
Instead of looking for talented coaches with real head coaching potential, including the ability motivate and lead from the front, NFL owners want flashy names and faces who are mostly younger, hail from the offensive side of the ball, and are predominantly white.
True, Bisaccia is white. He was also very deserving of the head coaching position. But for every Bisaccia passed over, far more numerous qualified Black coaches have faced the same result.
Steve Wilks, Byron Leftwich, Eric Bieniemy, Anthony Lynn and Jim Caldwell are just a few of the qualified Black coaches recently bypassed in favor of white coaches.
Wilks took over a 1-4 Carolina team flailing from the Matt Rhule era and led them to a 6-6 record (7-10 overall) and was one game away from winning the NFL South and securing a playoff birth.
For his hard work, Wilks was given a nice press release and pointed toward the door. In his place walked in Frank Reich, who was fired by the Colts after going 3-5-1 in his fifth season with Indianapolis.
While not young, Reich hailed from the offensive side of the ball while Wilks was from the defensive side, a common place for Black coaches. As it currently stands, Reich is 1-6 while Wilks has the 49ers defense humming and excited about the acquisition of Chase Young.
Carolina is just one example of the frustration Black coaches face. Josh McDaniels’ head coaching futility is another.
McDaniels has proven he’s a talented offensive coordinator. But just because you can run an offense doesn’t mean that you’re suited to run a team.
Hopefully, NFL owners will begin to realize that hiring a head coach should be determined by talent, not by trends or color, especially when only one color unfairly continues to receive chances the other doesn’t. Unfortunately, too many owners have become infatuated with trends and/or a certain look i.e. young and white, and its cost their teams, fans and the league.
McDaniels can return to the sidelines and lead an offense, just not as a head coach.
But if he receives yet another opportunity to become an NFL head coach, everyone needs to call that owner out immediately.
