What if the referees had called it a fumble or an incomplete pass? Or if Jon Gruden hadn't been traded? What if the late Barret Robbins hadn't gone missing before the Super Bowl? How about if Derek Carr had never broken his leg, or if Khalil Mack hadn't been dealt?
As an organization, the Raiders have been forced to deal with too many unanswerable "what ifs?" over the years. The next one that I'm about to introduce isn't nearly as impactful or wide-ranging as the aforementioned few, but such is the case with "what ifs?" You never truly know.
And this one is just so on brand for owner Mark Davis.
Davis can be accused of a lot of things, but nobody can knock him for his effort. He has gone the conventional route and the "oh my goodness, what are you doing?" route. Almost hiring NFL Draft analyst Dave Brugler to a front office role back in the day, then, is both stimulating and peak Davis.
Raiders almost hired noted NFL Draft analyst Dane Brugler for front office role
Brugler, who is now most famous for his work as an NFL Draft analyst at The Athletic, in particular, his pre-draft guide "The Beast," was recently a guest on NFL Spotlight with Ari Meirov. There, he disclosed that he once had a front office job offer on the table from the Raiders.
Timing, however, got in the way.
"So, it was 2015, and I had interviewed for a handful of teams," Brugler explained. "I just never -- either I just missed the cut, or it just didn't work out. I had turned down another job with the Raiders at one point because it just didn't work out -- the timing."
After this brief nugget, Brugler went on to talk about how he was inches from taking a job with the Kansas City Chiefs as well. But just as things went sideways with the Silver and Black, Brugler never ended up working for the Raiders' AFC West rival either.
Now, it is hard to say whether or not having Brugler in the front office would have made a difference. And we don't even know what year this was, so it is hard to say if Brugler would have even stuck around in Oakland, or if he would have been a casualty of greater incompetence anyway.
It is hard, though, not to picture and get excited about someone with as much NFL Draft genius as Brugler being in the Raiders' front office, in whatever capacity it may have been. His work speaks for itself, and there is practically no doubt that, at the very least, he would have been a great asset.
No, missing out on Brugler isn't like any of the aforementioned "what ifs?" But you'd have a hard time arguing that anything Oakland or Las Vegas has done otherwise has led to much success. Let's just say that the Raiders wouldn't have been worse off with Brugler helping make some draft decisions.
Dane Brugler almost being hired by Raiders is peak Mark Davis
I would also be remiss if I didn't go more into depth about just how classic a move this would have been for Davis. Since his father's passing, Mark Davis has made some fairly mainstream hires. But he's also gone a bit off the wall with a few in an admirable attempt to think outside of the box.
We should start with the obvious comparison: Mike Mayock. The Raiders hired him as their general manager on the final day of 2018, and Mayock wasn't a typical candidate. Yes, he played a short while in the NFL, but more recently, he had worked in commercial real estate and... as an NFL Draft analyst.
Mayock's tenure wasn't all bad. He did largely squander the team's mountain of first-round draft capital, and he is responsible for an all-time bad class in 2020. But the team he built did go to the playoffs in 2021, which is more than most other recent Raiders general managers can say.
Hiring Mayock wasn't deemed all that crazy, though, as a year prior, Davis tabbed Gruden as the team's next head coach after a decade of him working in broadcasting. Gruden obviously had prior experience as the Raiders' leader, but he was out of practice for quite a while.
With these two largely in mind, and we can't forget about hiring Antonio Pierce after being nothing more than a linebackers coach and Pete Carroll after a year off, the idea of the Raiders potentially hiring a draft guru to a front office role doesn't sound all that crazy. In fact, it sounds on brand.
So, Brugler's near-hire with Oakland struck me as particularly interesting. Not only is it an exercise in thinking about what could have been, but it is the perfect encapsulation of the Mark Davis experience: Leaving no stone unturned to make the Raiders better, but failing to ultimately do so.
Ideally, the Silver and Black have finally gotten it right with John Spytek and Klint Kubiak. Both are conventional candidates with strong résumés, and they appear to have gotten off to a strong start in Las Vegas. But that has hardly been the norm in the last 15 years with the Raiders.
And Brugler getting hired would have been anything but normal.
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