Primary scapegoats from the Las Vegas Raiders 2022 season
By Brad Weiss
Primary scapegoats from the Las Vegas Raiders 2022 season
Josh McDaniels
To close out the 2021 NFL season, special teams coach Rich Bisaccia stepped in as interim head coach and led the Raiders on an improbable run to the playoffs. However, it was pretty clear after the season that he would not be back, and that Mark Davis would be looking to make a splash at the head coach position.
That splash came in the form of Josh McDaniels, who took over a playoff team that added some key weapons in the offseason. With so much talent on the roster, and his reputation as an offensive genius, this was supposed to be the higher that put the Raiders over the top, but his first season at the helm was quite the opposite.
Questionable coaching decisions plagued McDaniels all season long, and the number of big leads blown in the second half of games was almost laughable. Las Vegas seemed to be in every game for the most part, but McDaniels was outcoached far too many times, even against Jeff Saturday, whose team did not win another game the rest of the season.
Players and fans loved Bisaccia, and some will believe that the Raiders would have been better off keeping him as permanent head coach. McDaniels will get another chance in 2023, but hopefully, his Raiders tenure ends a bit better than his Denver career, where he was fired in the middle of Year 2.