In the wee hours of the morning on Wednesday, the Las Vegas Raiders fired both Josh McDaniels and their general manager, Dave Ziegler. The decision to hire McDaniels was a puzzling one, but I guess Mark Davis wanted to give him another shot. Well, that quickly proved to be the wrong decision.
McDaniels won just six games in his first year as the head coach in 2022. The Raiders went 10-7 in 2021, so 2022 was supposed to be a year to build on that. The team obviously didn't make the playoffs that year and made more weird decisions. They hardly did squat to fix their defense going into this year and dumped Derek Carr for a worse quarterback in Jimmy Garoppolo.
Rewinding a bit, the team also traded a haul of draft picks for Davante Adams, reuniting him with a close friend and college teammate, Derek Carr. The pair were very productive together in 2022, but the Raiders seemed to have scapegoated Carr for their issues and essentially sent him home during the final weeks of the season.
Dumping Carr for Garoppolo was a horrid decision, and after eight games, it appears as if Garoppolo will now be heading to the bench in favor of rookie QB Aidan O'Connell. After just a year and a half, McDaniels is out as the Raiders head coach. This was the second time he's been fired in-season as an HC, and obviously, the first time came with the Broncos.
In 53 regular season games coached, McDaniels has gone 20-33 for a .377 winning percentage. He managed to have a worse winning percentage with the Raiders than he did with the Broncos, which is wild. At this point, Josh McDaniels is likely not getting another shot to be a head coach in the NFL. He's not yet 50 years old and can surely still coach in the league, but he can probably kiss being a head coach again goodbye.
For the Denver Broncos, they square off against the Raiders in Week 18, which is the last game of the season. If the team can continue to play well, Week 18 might be a game that has playoff implications. Perhaps the Broncos can finally break their losing streak to the Raiders now that McDaniels is gone. Antonio Pierce will now take over as the interim HC for LA.