Your 2023 record: 8-9, and that’s your sixth-best record in the last two decades, with three of those better seasons being 8-8. By the standards, this was a near-orgasmic experience, especially when you note that they won three of their last four games to get there. But that’s not really the reason last year was a triumph. It’s because Mark Davis tore himself from the one thing that makes him happy other than P.F. Chang’s—his WNBA team—to fire Josh McDaniels. He is now one of those rarest of failed supervisors, being fired in the middle of his second season in both his stops with the players ready to chokeslam him through the hood of his car.
The first upside to this was that interim replacement Antonio Pierce won the locker room over by not being McDaniels. The second is that after the Broncos fired McDaniels in 2009, they made the playoffs each of the next five seasons and won the Super Bowl in year five. They haven’t made the playoffs since, but that’s Denver’s problem. The precedent is there.
Some people are fans of the Raiders, and we’ll deal with you later. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Raiders. This 2024 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here
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