It’s 11 a.m. local time on the third Monday in May, and new Raiders coach Josh McDaniels is pointing to his left—over a shelf full of photos with family, Lombardi Trophies, and old coworkers like Robert Kraft and Tom Brady in them—and out the window of his corner office into the parking lot, with the Spring Mountains in the backdrop.
“One of the easy things that we’ve tried to keep in mind is we’ll get the best out of everyone here if they love coming to work every day because they love who they’re working for,” said McDaniels, sitting behind his desk. “That sounds so ridiculously simple. Seriously. But it’s the truth. If the players enjoy being coached by us the way we’re coaching them, if the coaches enjoy being treated the way they’re being treated, if the scouts and the personnel department enjoy the way that [GM] Dave [Ziegler] runs the meetings and gives everybody a voice, then when they drive in here in the morning? You should see this.”
The gated blacktop lot, adjacent to a set of three practice fields, is filled with cars, a long jump shot away from a desk full of binders and orderly stacks of paper.
“You drive in here at 6 a.m.? I’m not s—ting you when I tell you more than half these cars are already here,” McDaniels continued. “If I come in at 6, I’m like the 75th person in the building. If I come in at 5, I’m probably the 15th person. And that’s what I’m saying. We wanted that to be the case.”
The 46-year-old isn’t patting himself on the back, and he’s not doing that for Ziegler, who left a job leading New England’s personnel department to come with him, either.
Instead, on this spring afternoon, he’s trying to bring to life the vision he and Ziegler have set out, to reinvigorate one of the NFL’s most iconic brands after a year of nonstop tumult inside the franchise. And once you dig into it, you’ll see that what McDaniels is doing in pointing to that lot is actually the opposite of chest-thumping. Because this vision of his, and theirs, is really a result of being humbled, being reflective and trying to be better.
At the end of the desk, with his back to all those cars, is Ziegler—the Raiders’ 44-year-old GM who was brought into the NFL by McDaniels 12 years ago, who’s known McDaniels since he was a college recruit and has known McDaniels for even longer.
The temptation for so many has been to brand the Raiders’ beautiful, still relatively new facility as Patriots West, since McDaniels and Ziegler got here and quickly imported a slew of lieutenants and ex–New England players. The truth, though, is that’s not what this is, and it’s apparent from the minute you step into the building. It’s not the Patriot Way, either. It’s, in their words, “Our Way,” and by “our,” they’re referencing way more than two people.
“I think is the foundation of everything being built on relationships, and being inclusive and being open-minded,” Ziegler said. “And at the same time still being convicted on the things we believe in.”
“But also giving people an opportunity,” McDaniels added. “Bill [Belichick] gave us the opportunity to be ourselves, and to be independent thinkers and to have our own opinion, and he didn’t micromanage that. And that’s one of the best things that I’ve paid attention to the last decade of my life, watching him do it and then feeling like, … is , and it might not be what we know.”
It took a long time for McDaniels to get here—it’s been more than 11 years since he was fired by the Broncos, and more than four years since he stepped away from the Colts’ job to stay in New England. But now that he’s arrived, he’s bringing all that he’s learned with him. And, fair warning, it looks significantly different than you might expect.
