Vikings fan here, don’t follow the Raiders too closely.
I’ve been reading threads about Josh McDaniels for a while now and most threads are just piling on, not really mentioning specifically why he was a bad coach.
I decided to pull up a post game victory speech on YouTube and he just doesn’t seem that likable of a guy. I think being likable is a big part of being a coach, because players have to want to win for you.
Does that sum up why he was a bad coach? Or is there even more to it than that?
To be fair, the team didn’t underperform that badly this year. If you look at the schedule, the only terrible game was the Bears game. Other than that, they beat the teams they were supposed to beat and lost to the teams they were supposed to lose to.
So what’s the official one-paragraph summary on Josh McDaniels tenure with the Raiders and why he was bad?
Couldn’t score 20 points with a 105 million dollar offense.
Arrogance/lack of accountability.
Inability to connect with players.
Inability to mold his scheme around his players. Little to no compromise to his scheme.
truly can’t think of any pros for Mcvisor
Dictator like and stubborn.
Bad decision maker, too full of himself
In addition to being a complete fraud as an “offensive genius” you are correct that he is a thoroughly disrespectful person who threw all of his players under the bus before taking any responsibility for his poor coaching.
McD isn’t just a terrible coach, he’s a terrible human being.
You know the option routes you see in madden or audibles? Yeah forget about it.
He’s a terrible leader and was super stubborn with his offensive scheme. Instead of scheming to his players strengths he tried to fit the players into his scheme, and also imported a bunch of ex patriots players to try to run the offense to his specs. He also never took accountability and constantly talked about how it was the players not executing rather than he also needed to improve.
Aside from likeability, he made strategically horrible play calls and time management decisions on numerous occasions through the past 2 seasons…he’s not a good HC.
He loaded the team with a lot of washed up or useless guys because they were patriots: jimmy G, brandon Bolden, the new long snapper when we had a good one at the same price, Brian hoyer, Philip dorsett, chandler jones, Justin Herron, Jakob Johnson (he’s not a good FB, we already HAD a good FB before mcdaniels…). We’ll probably eat $100M in lost team money because of the players and coaches contracts that will be null after this season
He’s living off Bills success
This guy started a rookie QB in week 4, started his boyfriend in the next 2 games, then started Brian Hoyer in week 7. When asked why he didn’t go back to his rookie in week 6, he said “it’s not the preseason anymore”.
He decided to kick a FG down 8 points with 3 minutes left in the game using the reasoning “you need 2 possessions anyway”.
Last season after choking away another game, he said “you can’t win until you stop from losing”.
Fuck this asshole.
He does things like not go for points at the end of halves while losing and kicking off the next half. Or kicking a FG down 8 in the red zone with 3 min left.
No Tom Brady = no Patriot Way
You pretty much hit the nail on the head, terrible leader, made it feel like work instead of letting the guys have fun, which wore down the morale and that compounded the frustration when they kept losing. Tack on the fact that he shit the bed with the Carr situation and had the bright idea of trying to fix it with Jimmy G, and then acting like a total beta male bitch when the team finally called him on his shit, and you have yourself a fired head coach that should have never been hired in the first place.
Edit: also, saying that they lost to the teams they should have shows that you didn’t watch the games, aside from the Buffalo game, the other teams were basically trying to give the game away (Steelers, Lions) and then you lay a colossal fucking egg by choosing to start Brian Hoyer against the bears. If you’re just looking at box scores, it doesn’t tell the whole story of just how fucking terrible he was. Terrible clock management, unaware playcalling in critical moments in games, forcing his oline and running game into a power scheme when they didn’t have the personnel, it’s just way more shit than what you’d see on the surface
He thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room. He’s not humble. He doesn’t give enough respect.
He got spoiled with a hall of fame coach and best of all time QB as a glorified offensive analyst. He rode that wave into multiple unsuccessful “real” coaching positions that weren’t managed by Bill. He admits on record he is terrible socially and with people (and this a team of people AND players). He is credited with “knowing football”, but unless you can pair that with the other numerous factors it takes to manage a team you are useless outside of an analyst position. He rode his hype and high into fucking the broncos (not mad) and the Raiders (mad) as a HC.
He couldn’t adapt. It’s why we would lose games we shouldn’t. That’s my main gripe. If it didn’t go according to the exact plan it falls apart. Just what I noticed.