Former Las Vegas Raiders general manager Mike Mayock believes the Raiders might have had something special after their playoff run in the 2021-2022 season.
During that season, the Raiders started 3-2 before head coach Jon Gruden resigned after articles published by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times detailed Gruden's use of racist, homophobic and misogynistic terms in emails purportedly dating back to 2010.
The team then promoted Rich Bisaccia to become the interim head coach, who steadied the ship and led the Raiders to the playoffs. Mayock believes the job Bisaccia did as interim coach justified his full-time hiring during a recent appearance on OutKick's “Don't @ Me With Dan Dakich.”
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Mike Mayock (Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports)
“I'm entitled to my opinion and I think the Raiders would have been a high-level playoff team in recent years if they had kept Rich Bisaccia on board,” Mayock said.
“Players gravitate towards [Bisaccia] “It's not that he's lenient with them, but he supports them all the way and loves them on and off the field. He's one of the few coaches I've seen that can kick a guy's ass for three hours, and that guy sits in his office afterwards talking about problems with his girlfriend,” Mayock said.
Mayock discussed how Bisaccia guided the Raiders organization through some emotionally challenging times during that tumultuous 2021 season.
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Rich bisaccia (Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY Sports)
“We're 5-2 under Richie and we have a bye week. We get to the bye week, we come back, we're healthy, we're excited, we've got the right guy as head coach, and that's the week that Henry Ruggs got into a car accident and killed a woman and her dog, and that left an emotional void in our building that few coaches can recover from,” Mayock said.
“We'd survived the Gruden thing, now we've got the Henry Ruggs situation. We're facing a horrible New York Giants team and we lose. And we lost, I think, four of the next five because guys are processing and dealing with one of the worst things of their lives,” Mayock continued.
“Everybody wanted Henry Ruggs and that situation was terrible. But somehow Richie kept us in the game and we won the last four. … We went 10-7 and beat the Bengals in the wild-card game until the last play of the game; and they advance to the Super Bowl,” the former general manager added.
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Then-Las Vegas Raiders head coach Rich Bisaccia (Orlando Ramírez-USA TODAY Sports)
Despite the Raiders' success down the stretch that earned them a playoff spot, the Raiders took a different direction in the offseason.
“We thought we had something special. We were a young, aggressive, tough team, Richie is a great natural leader and we thought we had something to build on. The end result is Mark Davis wanted a new coach, he wanted a new general manager, he fired Richie and me. I told the owner that Rich Bisaccia had to be our coach, he was our guy. I got fired, Rich got fired, and he hired the two people from New England. [Josh] McDaniels and [Dave] “Ziegler,” Mayock said.
After Mayock and Bisaccia left, McDaniels went 9-16 in 25 games with the Raiders and was fired after Week 8 during his second season.
Ziegler was fired after two seasons with the team, and the Raiders hired former Los Angeles Chargers general manager Tom Telesco as their new general manager.
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Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis, left, and then-general manager Mike Mayock (Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports)
After firing McDaniels, the Raiders promoted Antonio Pierce as interim coach. This time, Davis hired his interim coach as a full-time coach after Pierce finished the season with a 5-4 record.
The Raiders failed to make the playoffs in either season following Bisaccia's departure and are currently 1-2 this season.
The Raiders' quest to return to the playoffs continues when they play the Cleveland Browns on Sunday.
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