The Raiders have entered a new era under head coach Klint Kubiak, and every indication is that Kubiak is running the team much differently than his most recent predecessors.
By all accounts, Kubiak has been making a strong impression on the players (which isn’t necessarily different from previous head coaches) and there’s a different feeling in the building than there was a year ago.
Raiders play-by-play announcer Jason Horowitz was a guest on Jesse Merrick’s podcast this week and he talked about what he has noticed since Kubiak joined the organization in February.
“It’s a different vibe,” Horowitz said on the Silver & Black Sports Network podcast. “Last year at this time at minicamp, they finished the media day, they finished the mandatory minicamp practice, and Pete Carroll was back inside, and they had basketball hoops everywhere.”
“I was kind of just chatting with Coach Carroll while he was shooting hoops and that’s not something that Klint Kubiak is going to do. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing that Pete did that… and my point in saying that was like, I don’t think that’s what caused the Raiders to have a 3 and 14 year was that Pete Carroll liked basketball, because it worked for Pete for however many years. He’s a borderline Hall of Famer or whatever, but it’s just different.”
“Klint is right to business. He’ll chat, but everyone who has said he is all ball. That is exactly who he is and you get that feeling.
I think he is giving orders to the other coaches to do what they do so he can kind of have a higher look at it,” Horowitz continued.
“I think he is very organized. It is stretched out for months at a time. They already have their entire training camp plan, but all of it’s just very different. [Klint] is very diligent and is surrounded by not necessarily his coordinators, but his special teams coordinator and his offensive line coach and some folks like that, like Mike McCoy… Those guys have been around forever.”
From the outside, a lot of what Kubiak has been doing seems similar to Josh McDaniels in 2023, but according to Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter, the two coaches have a much different approach with the players.
“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 the Las Vegas Raiders Insider 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.”
Does the Raiders’ rookie HC have the personality to be a great head coach?
The “knock” on Kubiak, if there is one, is that he doesn’t have the big personality that some see as a prerequisite to be a successful NFL head coach, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Vinny Bonsignore said in January.
“[He’s] not the most charismatic dude out there. I’ve been asked a lot and I’ve heard that it’s the one thing that comes across when you talk to people… the big concern about him. Let’s just be honest about it. Is he charismatic enough to lead a group of players?”
To Kubiak’s critics, though, former Raiders offensive lineman Marhsall Newhouse said in January he couldn’t care less if Kubiak isn’t a big talker.
“I got to be honest, I don’t give a sh– if he’s a big talker or not. It matters if you’re a good communicator,” Newhouse said on the Just Win podcast. “Is [Kubiak] a good communicator? This is Klint Kubiak, whose father, Gary Kubiak, has a lot of positive history in NFL. He’s been around it. To me, that matters a lot…”
“Even if Klint Kubiak is not the guy who, you know, in the old Raiders’ Black Hole that you would think is an a–hole, a swashbuckling head coach who’s cussing people out… if he does what he’s supposed to do and schemes players open and encourages them and puts them in the best position… who cares? I don’t care if he doesn’t talk a lot or if he’s holding it back necessarily to kind of be a better, more balanced coach, a more stoic kind of even keel coach…”
“You’ve had demonstrative guys who have fizzled out, who just pissed everybody off,” Newouse continued. “And eventually, if you’re not winning, which the Raiders have done a lot of not winning lately, that runs dry that really people get tired of that really quickly.”
x: @raidersbeat
Can you coach or not. Screw the media sound bites. Bottom line-you are what your record says you are.