Are Las Vegas Raiders fans being too harsh by laying so much blame on the team’s power duo? Head coach Josh McDaniels and general manager Dave Ziegler inherited a team devoid of substantial depth. Sooner or later, the highly underwhelming drafting under Jon Gruden and Mike Mayock was bound to rear its head.
Raiders fans are clearly blaming the wrong people, right?
Of course, McDaniels and Ziegler did take on an organization with tons of talent at several positions. Just to name a few: running back; tight end; and yes, quarterback. Ziegler even doubled down on the offense, trading away a first and second round pick for Davante Adams. Regrettably, the team finished with single-digit wins. Still, maybe the expectations from both fans and owner Mark Davis were unrealistic. Well, that’s certainly worth a debate. However, at least one NFL executive believes that the disappointing 2022 run isn’t exclusively the fault of McDaniels and Ziegler.
In an interesting tidbit that Sports Illustrated’s Hondo Carpenter published, he cites an anonymous executive who was quite blunt in his assessment of the Raiders.
“People can hate the new guys (Ziegler, McDaniels), but the drafting before they arrived was so bad, and that isn’t on them. Was it their fault Mark said the team wasn’t rebuilding?”
Bad roster building catches up with you, sooner or later…
While Mayock and Gruden hit on several mid and late round players, such as Maxx Crosby, the overall body of work isn’t noteworthy. Any fan that understands how a championship roster is built knows that it takes multiple drafts assemble an adequate collection. They won’t all be hits; we know this, the draft is a crapshoot. Unfortunately, you can’t crap out on multiple first round picks the way that Ziegler and McDaniels’ predecessors did.
As far as Davis is concerned, did he hoodwink his new coach and general manager?
“Was it their fault they were sold a franchise in a better condition than it was? How many times was there zero depth last season or some guy that should have been sacking groceries starting? Should Mark Davis have been embarrassed about that? That wasn’t on Josh and Dave; that was on the previous guys.”
Well, at this point, both Dave Ziegler and Josh McDaniels are in it for the long haul. We can all hear the collective sigh from a certain sect of Raiders fans; however, patience is needed to build a winner. They did, after all, tolerate Gruden’s first three years before he began fielding a winner; what’s another year or two going to cost?
*Top Photo: Official Raiders YouTube Channel
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