In the wake of Ben Johnson’s decision to take the Bears’ head coaching job over the Raiders, there has been an unusual amount of chatter from Johnson’s side of the situation.
There were vague reports on how the situation between Johnson and the Raiders fell apart, but his agent came out a week after Johnson signed with the Bears and essentially said there was never serious interest on Johnson’s part in becoming the next head coach in Las Vegas.
According to Johnson’s agent, Rick Smith, who appeared on the 2nd City Gridiron podcast, the Raiders were never the front runners to get Johnson, but he was happy to have the bad information out there.
“Initial gut reaction day one on the Raiders was ‘No go. Okay?” Smith said. “Tom Brady absolutely has an extremely compelling case that gets you to listen. The whole thing ‘Ben to the Raiders… great sources’ and all the other stuff, that was never right.”
From there, Smith confirmed the Raiders were essentially contract leverage to use against the Bears.
“Sometimes, going back to my job, things go viral that you’re like ‘I got to put a break on this’ and sometimes things go viral like ‘No, this is good. I like this’ and that viral thing [about the Raiders] was ‘I like this. Let’s just leave that out there,’” Smith continued.
Additionally, a report from Sports Illustrated insider Albert Breer on Wednesday said that Johnson’s camp was not happy with the Raiders for requesting an interview when they had already been told the answer was ‘No.’
“When [Ben] Johnson and his camp planning things out, going back to November and December, they didn’t want to go through a full tour of interviews. The whole idea for them was to assess the openings and then decide which jobs [they] could legitimately see [themselves] taking,” Breer said this week on The Breer Report.
“There were a number of jobs they decided they wouldn’t see themselves taking and so they communicated to those teams quietly, ‘Don’t even put in request in, we don’t want to embarrass you, we don’t want to look like jerks, so we’ll respectfully decline [and] you won’t have to do anything officially, but we’re saying no to you and everyone will go on their merry way,’” Breer continued.
To the comments from Smith and yesterday’s report from Breer, Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter responded with his thoughts on the messaging coming out of Johnson’s camp in recent weeks.
“I have not heard nor read it, but I have been told by several people [that] his agent is out there talking, acting as if the Raiders were never in contention,” Hondo said on the Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast.
“I can tell you this. I am no way calling anyone a liar,” he continued. “But if the agent truly feels like the Raiders were never in contention, which I find very difficult to believe, he needs to just talk to his client and ask his client who he may have talked to. He’s going to hurt his client… [and] his agent is making it a very bad look.”
It’s water under the bridge now, but there definitely seems to be some missing pieces to what happened between the Raiders and Johnson in the days leading up to his decision to take the Bears’ job.
Based on Carpenter’s comments, it sounds like Johnson was telling people in the industry that he wanted the Raiders’ job.
It’s all fine and well to drum up a market, but to circle back and say the interest was never there… well, that can’t be sitting well with the Raiders and many of the well-respected insiders in the league who were reporting on it.
So, Ben Johnson does not have a great chance to succeed, if he flops, which he could as he is not a proven commodity. Pete Carrol is and Raiders got the best, it was not Johnson. Wait till he may get fired, then hopefully all this Euphoria around him will smell like a bad garbage can.