The popular belief right now is that Ben Johnson is the coaching candidate at the top of the Raiders’ list, but it’s still relatively early in the hiring process and a Lions playoff run could serve to drag things out into next month.
Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter said on Sunday he thinks the Raiders may know who their next head coach will be by next week, and he also dropped a potential general manager to keep an eye on if Johnson ends up in Las Vegas – or for that matter, even if he doesn’t.
“I texted an NFL source… and asked the person ‘what are you hearing?’ He said, ‘Ben Johnson [and] Spytek, that’s a dream team in Vegas,'” Hondo said on the Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast. “At this point today, Sunday afternoon, I think you’re looking at Ben Johnson as the leader, and I think that you’re looking at John Spytek certainly as somebody that around the NFL is getting a lot of attention.”
Spytek was a former college teammate of Tom Brady’s and was said to be a key figure in bringing Brady to the Buccaneers in 2020.
Spytek has been with the Buccaneers for nine seasons and two of those seasons as the Assistant General Manager. He was first hired in Tampa Bay in 2016 as the Director of Player Personnel and was promoted to Vice President of Player Personnel in 2021. He has been in the NFL for 21 seasons and worked for the Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, Philadelphia Eagles and Denver Broncos, prior to joining the Buccaneers.
Elsewhere around the league, it was announced on Monday that Mike McCarthy will not be back with the Cowboys in 2025, but Dallas missed an important window of opportunity to speak with Johnson during the bye week.
As ESPN’s Adam Schefter pointed out, the Cowboys put themselves on the wrong side of the hiring curve by waiting so long to make a decision on McCarthy.
A coach to watch for the Cowboys wouldn’t be… Deion Sanders. Would it?
Since Hondo Carpenter has such close ties to the Cartwright family and the Ponderosa, the Raider should hire Ben to be head coach, Adam to be GM, Hoss to be defensive coordinator, Little Joe to be offensive coordinator, and Hop Sing to be strength and conditioning coordinator. That, my friend, is a dream team.
I would make hop sing the punter