Raiders vs Giants 2023 Week 9: Studs and Duds

Josh McDaniels and Dave Ziegler - Duds

One of the prevailing messages from last week about Dave Ziegler and Josh McDaniels was that they were too focused on replicating what they had in New England versus trying to create something new in Las Vegas. They both seemed to be dead set on chasing the ghosts of the past rather than building up the team to compete in the modern NFL.

They also did not have the urgency to win that Davis was looking for in a GM-coach duo.

Part of this approach was to have a much more rigid coaching style than is commonplace in the modern NFL and to focus on bringing in guys who were familiar with the McDaniels system and  The Patriot Way. This led to players being frustrated with being micro-managed on and off the field and that led to tightness and poor execution in crunch time.

In contrast, we saw that the Raiders played with a loose but focused approach on Sunday and the aggression paid off with a huge victory against a bad team.

To be completely fair, the Raiders probably would have beaten the Giants if Josh McDaniels was still the coach but we could tell that the energy and confidence had been sapped from the team after the loss to Detroit. Now McDaniels and Ziegler are gone and the good vibes are back in Las Vegas. They could come crashing back to Earth after this upcoming three-game stretch against the Jets, Dolphins, and Chiefs, but we knew that McDaniels was not the long-term answer anyway and change was needed immediately regardless of how the rest of the season plays out.