The Las Vegas Raiders have had many head coaching failures over the last couple of decades. However, Josh McDaniels’ recent tenure was certainly among the worst.
He took a team that made the playoffs under interim head coach Rich Bisaccia and transformed them into one of the worst teams in the NFL. Things got so toxic that the Raiders decided to fire McDaniels before he finished his second season with the team.
The coach took the 2024 season off, but landed a job as the offensive coordinator for the New England Patriots this offseason. It’s a role he’s had a lot of success at in the past. McDaniels’ first game back on the sidelines since getting fired will ironically be against the Raiders.
While things didn’t end well between the two sides, McDaniels doesn’t look at Sunday’s matchup as a revenge game.
“I don’t harbor any ill will towards any of the things that haven’t worked out in my career, you know, and there’s been many of them,” McDaniels said ahead of the matchup, per Andrew Callahan of the Boston Herald.
McDaniels may not admit that he has this game circled on his calendar, but there’s no doubt it will feel good to stick it to the team that fired him in his first game back.
Pete Carroll Has History With Patriots
McDaniels’ “revenge game” against the Raiders might be the more notable talking point, but it’s easy to forget that Pete Carroll was once fired by the Patriots. That was over two decades ago, and Carroll has had plenty of chances at revenge.
Revenge isn’t at the top of Carroll’s mind. He’s more concerned with the Patriots’ likely plan to run the ball early and often.
“They’re physical like you would think,” Carroll said Wednesday. “Josh [McDaniels] has run the ball a lot in his history, and Mike Vrabel wants to run the football too. They’re very physical about it. The running backs run really hard, and they have, like Josh has traditionally had, a really downhill attack. It’s pretty classic, and it’s really good.”
That said, Carroll was honest about having a bit more feelings playing the Patriots than he would with most NFL teams.
“Yeah, it does,” Carroll said when asked if his history with the Patriots still matters.
Carroll Talks Drake Maye’s Dual-Threat Ability
The most notable player the Raiders need to watch in Week 1 is quarterback Drake Maye. He showed some promising flashes last season, and now he has a coach with a proven track record of developing quarterbacks.
Maye isn’t Lamar Jackson, but he does have the ability to run the ball. That’s something the Raiders are being mindful of.
“It’s absolutely in the middle of the preparation because he is so apt,” Carroll said. “He ran for almost 500 yards last year, and I think our numbers were like he’s the second most scrambling guy last year. We know that he can take off and run, and he can make things happen. And he did it in preseason, and he made it look easy. So that’s a big factor in their favor as a running team as well. It’s even more important.”
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