The Raiders landed the most sought-after head coaching candidate in this year’s hiring cycle, but the fear of many Raider fans is that they have seen this movie before…
Could Klint Kubiak become the next Josh McDaniels?
Like McDaniels, Kubiak is considered one of the brightest young offensive coaches in the NFL, and a lot of the enthusiasm around Kubiak sounds eerily similar to the talking points on McDaniels four years ago.
The California Post’s Vinny Bonsignore was asked this week if he thought Kubiak might be of a similar mold as McDaniels and the long-time insider said the two have significant differences.
“No, I wouldn’t [say they are similar] and the reason I say that is what I’m getting behind the scenes type of stuff. They are two different people,” Bonsignore said on Raider Nation Radio’s Morning Tailgate.
But while Bonsignore offered good news on the McDaniels comparisons to Kubiak, he did offer a disappointing take on McDaniels’ tenure in Las Vegas.
“This will not go over well, but I still feel like, you know, had things just been allowed to play out, who knows what would have happened with Josh McDaniels as the head coach,” Bonsignore said.
“I will say this, it just felt off from the very beginning. There wasn’t a lot of support for him among Raider Nation.
There’s a lot of fans who just didn’t like the Patriots connection. They didn’t like what necessarily happened in Denver. It just, it felt off… There was never a honeymoon period for Josh here.”
For what it’s worth, part of the reason McDaniels didn’t get a honeymoon period with the players is that he didn’t connect well with the players.
Remember, it was reportedly the players who lost confidence in McDaniels and shared that sentiment directly with ownership. Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter talked about that dynamic last week on his podcast.
“That’s not Klint. Klint is a guy that when he’s happy, he’s talking to you. Klint is a guy when he’s happy, he’s communicating to you. Klint is a guy that when he’s when he’s telling you, ‘Hey, I like this, I don’t like this.’ And so, they appreciate he’s very communicative. [Don’t] think he’s coming off as a non-communicative person because that’s not the case at all. A couple of people have mentioned that specifically. They think he’s extremely communicative.”
Time will tell if Kubiak was the right hire for the Raiders, but early indications from the locker room are that he is getting a lot of things right in his first few months with the team.
For what it’s worth, one of the things Kubiak seems to be getting right so far is his approach to team meetings…
“I had one player who would tell me about Josh McDaniels… they liked him the person off the field… away from football and you can be away from football in the building. But they said, I don’t think there’s anything Josh McDaniels dislikes more than having to say, ‘meeting is over.’” Carpenter said on his podcast last month.
“Last year, under Pete, there was a lot of meetings. But they weren’t always efficient. I’m not going to get into detail. I would just tell you, there was one particular meeting of which I was made aware, where one of the coaches was teaching something and talking about something [with] his boss… and the players are sitting there, and literally there’s a discussion going on among the coaches. That stuff should be all handled at meetings, coaches’ meetings, so that when you get into a classroom setting, it’s boom, boom, boom, boom efficiency.”
x: @raidersbeat