{"id":745215,"date":"2026-02-11T17:07:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T17:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/745215\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T17:07:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T17:07:14","slug":"klint-kubiak-receives-warm-welcome-from-legendary-cast-of-raiders-avengers-upon-arrival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/745215\/","title":{"rendered":"Klint Kubiak receives warm welcome from legendary cast of ‘Raiders Avengers’ upon arrival"},"content":{"rendered":"

And with that, flanked on both sides of the dais by Raiders royalty and with the team’s three Lombardi Trophies in the foreground \u2013 the stoic Kubiak got the first victory of his Raiders tenure.<\/p>\n

He won the press conference. But the real challenge, obviously, is winning games, while embracing a past sliding into a warm memory.<\/p>\n

So what does Plunkett hope the Kubiak hiring brings?<\/p>\n

“More victories,” Plunkett said, with a twinkle in his eye. “Bring the team together. Make it a solid unit of offense, defense and special teams, you know? Get them to perform.”<\/p>\n

It’s Day 1 of the Kubiak Era. He still needs to hire a staff, get with general manager John Spytek to evaluate the roster, utilize the expected $90 million-plus of salary cap space<\/a> and, oh yeah, figure out what to do with that No. 1 overall draft pick.<\/p>\n

But first, Kubiak will be back in Seattle for the Seahawks’ Super Bowl championship parade on Wednesday before returning to work on Thursday. So to borrow an unfortunate phrase, it’s not just concepts of a plan Kubiak has to address; it’s all about X’s and O’s.<\/p>\n

And that has Allen and Long more than intrigued. Because as Long said, competitive teams are built “from the inside out” when it comes to roster construction.<\/p>\n

“Offensive line’s an issue; defensive front has to be better,” Long told me in the Raiders’ meal room, before getting personal, so to speak. “I played against this coach’s dad. We all played against his dad. And if I were going to hire a coach, you think about their family, that system, that scheme is the predominant scheme [in the NFL today]. There are different variations of it – [Sean] McVay runs it one way. [Kyle] Shanahan runs it another way. The guy in Minnesota [Kevin O’Connell] runs it another way.<\/p>\n

“This is the new\u2026world order of offense. How do we get there? Build from within – both from the defensive front and the offensive front.”<\/p>\n

Allen, sitting across the table, nodded his head in agreement.<\/p>\n

“I think we’re all on the same page about building the line of scrimmage first,” Allen said. “If you have guys up front, players like myself get all the credit, Todd Christensen and Cliff Branch. But you can basically run any system you want to if you have the guys up front.”<\/p>\n

Long chimed back in: “If you can run it, you can throw it. Just look at the Super Bowl.”<\/p>\n

“Success really rides on the line of scrimmage,” Allen added. “On both sides.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And with that, flanked on both sides of the dais by Raiders royalty and with the team’s three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":745216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2065],"tags":[7,268,269,8357,1744,393,2455,2454,6,525],"class_list":{"0":"post-745215","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-las-vegas-raiders","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-home-centerpiece","10":"tag-home-latest-stories","11":"tag-klint-kubiak","12":"tag-las-vegas","13":"tag-las-vegas-raiders","14":"tag-lasvegas","15":"tag-lasvegasraiders","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-raiders"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116053099121468237","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}