The Las Vegas Raiders have poached from a lot of different front offices over the years and now trying their hands at emulating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. With Tom Brady apparently running the show as a minority owner, his first major move was to hire John Spytek as general manager.
The former Buccaneers assistant general manager spent nearly a decade with the franchise and helped oversee their recent Super Bowl win. Though he wasn't the guy calling the shots in Tampa, he was very respected.
Bruce Arians was the head coach for the Buccaneers for much of Spytek's time there. He thinks Spytek has what it takes to be a successful general manager.
“You can’t have a personnel department or coaching staff that doesn’t work together,” Arians said in an interview with The Athletic. “It just leads to the same bulls*** of, ‘Well, we don’t have any players,’ and ‘Oh, they can’t coach ’em.’ They’ve got to work together so you know what you’re looking for to build your team. The coaches and scouts were hand-in-hand … and Spy’s been a big part of that.”
While working with coaches is important, his ability to evaluate players might be even more important. Luckily, Spytek is also great at that, according to Arians.
“He’s really, really sharp, especially in evaluation — pretty much at all positions,” Arians said.
This has to be music to the ears of Raiders fans as the team has been searching for a great general manager for what feels like decades. Arians certainly thinks Las Vegas finally got one.
“I think he’ll be excellent (as a general manager),” Arians said. “The Raiders have a good cap situation. He knows how to rebuild a roster because he was part of it in Tampa. We had four or five great drafts in a row, so he knows how to put it together.”