The Las Vegas Raiders had a massive victory (by their standards) on Sunday against the lowly New York Giants and celebrated like they won the Super Bowl. They were getting hype in the locker room, smoking cigars, going live on instagram... the whole nine. This coming in an interesting week for them, as they fired their head coach Josh McDaniels and GM Dave Ziegler that previous Wednesday, leaving a short week for interim head coach Antonio Pierce to get his boys ready for Sunday.
This isn't uncommon in the NFL, especially when a team has struggled offensively and the HC is seen as the guru offensive mastermind behind the second half of the Patriots dynasty. But what is uncommon, and something I have never heard of in almost any professional field, is this Festivus style 'airing of the grievances' meeting that allegedly happened between the whole organization before McDaniels and Ziegler got canned, story broken by Jay Glazer and corroborated by Maxx Crosby on Monday.
Players only meetings to get everyone hyped up are commonplace, coaches and ownership meet regularly I'm sure when things aren't going well, but the story of Antonio Pierce talking about how the Giants team he was on and a starting middle linebacker for back in 2007 came together as a team, and ended up defeating the McDaniels offense of the Patriots in the Super Bowl that year in the biggest upset in NFL history is objectively funny. I can picture Antonio Pierce getting all riled up, rah rah players' coach style talking smack on the '07 Patriots, while McDaniels is just sitting there all cringey not knowing what to say. Apparently, they started getting into a fight about his disrespect for McDaniels' old team, and at that point I don't even know what happens... just awkward silence? Does Mark Davis come in and adjourn the meeting? Does he fire McDaniels right then and there? Absolutely wild stuff. The next morning, both head coach and GM are OUT, and the kids are officially running the asylum in Vegas. They staged a coup against the sitting president and won! And ya know what? It's fitting for the Raiders - a franchise that specializes in a dearth of professionalism, focuses more on feelings then X's and O's and performance, in a city built on instant gratification, with an owner that runs on pure amygdala and dopamine driven decision making from hitting the slot machines to whatever low quality food and/or other substances he is putting into his body.
It all goes back to culture... what type of culture do you want to create for your organization? One where everybody is buddies and happy and rah rah? It can work if you have outrageously good players and things are going well - think Pete Carroll with the Seahawks before the end of the Legion of Boom in 2014, or a silicon valley startup that hits the jackpot of right time, right place and exits in 2019 before the whole market goes back to reality a couple of years later. But it cannot last long term... it breaks physics not to have that inherent pressure to any organization, not to have that delineation and hierarchy when things go sideways, which they inevitably will. Antonio Pierce is talking about respect for the practice squad guys and how he wants them to be working towards the active roster - how is that going to feel when an active roster guy gets the boot for a younger, cheaper guy - how rah rah are you going to feel then as an organization? How about when you suffer that first tough loss, or go on a 3 game losing streak? Will the eggshells be back, Hunter Renfrow?
As my good friend and colleague TI put in an eloquent tweet, Raiders are 'a high school football team' (paraphrasing). This is a team whose fans will still blame them being terrible for the last 30 years on the tuck rule in 2001 divisional playoff against the NEPs, and talk little about making one of the worst QB selections of all-time with Jamarcus Russell in 2007, or drafting Darius Heyward-Bey with the 7th overall pick in '09 just because he was fast, or terrible ownership who will be paying former head coaches for the next 7 years (something like that, I don't know the ins and outs of the Gruden deal that was signed in 2019 but it was supposed to be 10 years before the NFL canceled him, and McDaniels was 1.5 years into a 6 year deal). So hey, best of luck to the Raiders the rest of the season! We'll be enjoying the show.
Hope to see you back in New England soon, Josh!
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