Last night, there were multiple reports from a variety of sources that all said the same thing: Jim Harbaugh, the object of the Raiders’ affections (after Gruden took his name off the market by signing a contract extension with ESPN) has decided to become the head coach at his alma mater, the University of Michigan.
With Harbaugh out of the picture, the Raiders are left without the “rockstar” coaching candidate that owner Mark Davis reportedly was looking for.
Now, the team must quickly transition their search to their next candidate, whoever that may be.
Options likely include Jets’ head coach Rex Ryan, Cardinals’ defensive coordinator Todd Bowles, Seattle offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell, Denver offensive coordinator Adam Gase and defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio, and former Packers and Seahawks head coach Mike Holmgren.
Holmgren may be the closest thing the Raiders can get to a “rockstar” head coach at this point in that Holmgren has had sustained success over the years: he won two Super Bowls as offensive coordinator for the 49ers and another as head coach in Green Bay. He also had mixed success in Seattle, where he last coached.
Rex Ryan, who is expected to be fired from the Jets and, like Harbaugh, coached his team to two back to back AFC Championship games but couldn’t ever make it into the Super Bowl with New York. He has not been fired as of press time but is widely expected to be fired after the season.
Todd Bowles is a well respected assistant coach who is expected to get a good shot at being a head coach this season. He worked under Tony Sparano in Miami and was designated the Assistant Head Coach, there. When Sparano was fired at the end of the 2011 season, Bowles was named the interim head coach and the team went 2-1 under him for the remainder of the season. Bowles has not been an NFL head coach outside of the interim designation.
Darrell Bevell is well regarded as a quarterback coach, having developed Russell Wilson quickly and winning a Super Bowl as offensive coordinator with Seattle and Russell. He also was able to help Favre to achieve the best QB rating in his illustrious career, when he was the OC with Favre in Minnesota. Bevell has never been a head coach but has been talked about for several years as a top candidate.
Adam Gase is perhaps the biggest gamble on the list I gave – as Peyton Manning’s offensive coordinator in Denver for the last two seasons, it’s to gauge how much of their success is due to his coaching and how much is due to Manning’s considerable influence. Personally, I’d pass on Gase as the Raiders cannot afford to promote another up-and-coming coordinator who isn’t quite yet ready to be a head coach.
Jack Del Rio has not been talked about as much as the other candidates but he has head coaching experience (as coach of the Jaguars from 2003-2011) and he was respected enough in the Broncos organization to be named as the interim head coach in 2014 when John Fox was unable to fulfill his duties due to a temporary medical condition.
There is also the possibility that the Raiders would retain Tony Sparano as interim head coach, although that rarely seems to work out well for teams that do it.
Other options could include Mike Smith, current head coach of the Falcons, who is expected to be fired after the season, and 49ers defensive coordinator Vic Fangio. For whatever reason, neither of these has gathered the same amount of traction with the masses.
_______________________________________________________________________________
The most important thing for the Raiders, now, is speed. Harbaugh was an ideal candidate because he was successful, he had a history of turning around struggling programs, and he was local. None of the other candidates is as perfect a fit.
The Raiders cannot afford to be too slow and deliberate in their search this time around. It’s not as if Oakland dragged it’s feet when they hired Allen but they lagged in comparison to the other teams looking for a head coach.
When the Raiders announced Allen on January 24th, 2012, most of the other new head coaches had already been hired and had started snapping up the best available remaining coaches as their coordinators. Allen put together a team of coaches that left something to be desired and his first selection of offensive coordinator, Greg Knapp, was fired after his first year of disastrous offensive performances.
In 2012, the Raiders were very much an organization in transition. Al Davis, the long-time owner and de facto GM of the Raiders had passed away in the middle of the 2011 season and ownership of the team had passed to his son, Mark Davis.
Mark Davis did not have the pedigree of his father, who bought the team after being a successful head coach with the AFL team. Mark knew he had to get help with the football decisions so he met with and subsequently hired Reggie McKenzie as the team’s General Manager on January 5th, 2012.
McKenzie did not immediately begin his head coaching search upon being hired. First, he determined he had to meet with then-current head coach Hue Jackson. It wasn’t until after he interviewed Jackson that he decided that he wanted to go a different direction, fired Jackson, and started the head coaching search.
This time around, the Raiders cannot afford to be behind the other teams. The advantage they have this off-season is that they know they have a head coach vacancy already and as soon as the season ends they can begin their coaching search.
I don’t pretend to know who would be the best fit as the team’s head coach. Of the coaching candidates, Rex Ryan appears to be the closest thing to a “slam-dunk” in that he has the head coaching experience and guided his team well into the playoffs multiple times, he has the personality to get the players to follow him, and he’s still considered one of the best defensive minds in the NFL.
For the others? I don’t know. The difficulty in projecting a coordinator to head coach is that a great football mind does not make a great head coach. The head coach must be the teams’ tone-setter. Ideally, the head coach is a motivator and is able to chart the future of the organization while entrusting much of the day to day responsibilities to his coordinators.
Former Raiders head coach Norv Turner is a perfect example of this distinction. Turner may well be the best offensive coordinator in the NFL – and he has been great at designing and calling plays for his entire career. And yet, Turner never had success as a head coach despite his great offensive mind.
Why? Because the skills of a head coach are not the same as those of a great offensive coordinator. Turner, despite his great offensive mind, lacks the ability to motivate the team and push them in the right direction and his teams perennially under-performed because they lacked the toughness that an elite head coach can instill.
Mark Davis must first decide whether he wants to keep or fire Reggie McKenzie and he needs to make that choice immediately. There is only a tiny margin of error in terms of the amount of time he has to make that choice, especially if the choice is to fire McKenzie.
With both Gruden and Harbaugh spurning the Raiders’ advances, Davis may very well decide that keeping McKenzie is the best course of action at this point.
Either way, Davis needs to show decisiveness and make an announcement shortly after the end of the season as to which way the team is going to go.
Once that decision is made, Davis and/or McKenzie needs to immediately start the head coaching search and should line up candidates to interview as quickly as possible.
The Raiders, for all of their organizational issues (10+ years of losing, trying to get a new stadium, potentially moving to Los Angeles) should still be a reasonably attractive gig for a head coach in that they have a promising young QB in Derek Carr, a defensive rookie of the year candidate in Khalil Mack, a likely top 5 selection in the 2015 Draft and over $50 million in cap money to spend in free agency.
The most important thing the team can do, now, is to be decisive as to who they want to coach their squad next year and to pull the trigger to move forward with that coach, so that he can line up the best coaches he can find as his assistants and immediately turn his focus towards free agency and the draft.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
