The Josh McDaniels era in Las Vegas will be a forgettable one. McDaniels was fired Wednesday amid the team’s consistent struggles and it was even reported by NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport that a team meeting on Oct. 26 with Raiders players broke the former coach.
During this meeting before an embarrassing loss to the Lions on Monday night, players and coaches ripped into McDaniels, leaving him unlike his usual self. However, some new details from the meeting have since come to light revolving around McDaniels’s disdain for any slander on his former team, the Patriots.
Raiders linebackers coach Antonio Pierce was named interim coach after McDaniels was fired but during the team meeting, he tried to galvanize the team using his own experience as a player with the Giants. McDaniels, however, took exception to this because it was at the expense of the Patriots. Pierce used New York’s improbable win over an undefeated New England squad in Super Bowl XLII as an example of believing you can beat anyone and apparently McDaniels didn’t care for it.
"There was this big airing of the grievance meeting and players just unloaded on Josh McDaniels." @JayGlazer has the Inside Scoop on the Raiders' pic.twitter.com/pGx0ixwoVd
— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) November 5, 2023
“When he finished up that speech, everybody thinks they’re great—except for Josh McDaniels,” Fox Sports’s Jay Glazer reported Sunday. “Josh McDaniels then goes over to him and says, ‘Don’t ever talk about the Patriots like that.’ And then you really saw how divided that building got.”
Owner Mark Davis took notice of this and it influenced his decision to not only fire McDaniels, but name Pierce as interim coach, per Glazer. Truly a strange time to stick up for your former employer.
