Las Vegas Raiders at Chicago Bears: Studs and Duds from 2023 Week 7

Raiders HC Josh McDaniels - Dud 

The past few weeks have not been kind to Josh McDaniels who has been a dud despite the Raiders short win streak. In fact, he may have been a dud every week this year but this week is definitely the worst of this short season. 

The Raiders played like a team without direction or leadership on Sunday and who is ultimately responsible for that? The head coach. The Raiders should have beaten a Bears team that was ready to quit on the season and had all the excuses to lose but instead, they came out and punched a listless team in the mouth and Vegas had no answers. 

The first mistake McDaniels made was starting Brian Hoyer who has not won a game in a lifetime and has not even thrown a touchdown pass in 5 years or so. The obvious choice was to play rookie Aidan O’Connell, who despite his flaws, looked good in the second half against the LA Chargers. After the game, McDaniels said that he didnt start O’Connell because “it’s not the preseason anymore” but he chose to start him on short notice against a division rival earlier in th year. 

There is no logic to the decisions McDaniels has made this year and we have called him out on this time and time again. He is conservative to a fault and acts like he still has a Bill Belichick-lead defense to back up his decisions. For a supposed genius on offense, his offense has yet to score 20 points in a game and the Raiders as a whole are averaging 16 points through 7 weeks. Even the lowly Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos are scoring at a higher clip than the Raiders. 

This embarrassment is just another in the long list that now include losing to a high school football coach, Baker Mayfield fresh off the airplane, blowing 6 second half leads in 2022, and now losing to one of the worst teams in football with their backup QB and third string RB. There are no positives to what McDaniels brings to the table as the team looks sloppy, unorganized, and don’t play hard on the road.

Time is up for Josh McDaniels in Las Vegas and we just need Mark Davis to come down off his WNBA championship high to realize that it’s time for change.