By all accounts, the Las Vegas Raiders put all their eggs in the Klint Kubiak basket.<\/p>\n
Sure, there were other intriguing candidates to assume the mantle of the 27th head coach of the Silver & Black such as Davis Webb<\/a> (who remained with the Denver Broncos<\/a> and got a promotion) and Carolina Panthers<\/a> defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero. But Las Vegas<\/a> rolled the dice by patiently waiting for Kubiak, who was orchestrating the Seattle Seahawks<\/a>\u2019 offense enroute to a Super Bowl win this past season.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Don\u2019t lie: You were concerned the Raiders\u2019 waiting game was going to end in Kubiak spurning the team. It\u2019s okay to admit it now.<\/p>\n Thus, Las Vegas\u2019 initial gamble paid dividends from the get now that Kubiak is captaining the ship. That was the initial major get for general manager John Spytek and minority owner Tom Brady<\/a> \u2014 the two people owner Mark Davis tabbed to find his football team a new lead man.<\/p>\n And the upcoming 2026 campaign will tell Kubiak and Spytek plenty. Raider Nation, too.<\/p>\n One of the things the team learned very quickly is the new head coach is a pure football mind. He doesn\u2019t jive with malarkey.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cI put that on our team leaders. It\u2019s important for them to just come together before practice,\u201d Kubiak said when asked about camaraderie his team displayed after a session back on May 20.<\/p>\n But I couldn\u2019t help but chuckle at the following sentence to that answer: \u201cI thought it was a little too lengthy. We probably lost two minutes of practice time right there, so we can dap it up a little quicker next time.\u201d<\/p>\n Kubiak had a similar response when asked about schedule release video that had a nod to the movie \u201cStep Brothers\u201d<\/a> that featured prized rookie quarterback Fernando Mendoza\u2019s acting chops, alongside veteran Kirk Cousins<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I\u2019d love for him to focus on football more,\u201d said Kubiak in deadpan.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll see how the no-nonsense, football junkie approach permeates through the team this coming season. That\u2019s one of many things that\u2019ll surface in Year 1 of the Kubiak-Spytek combination. The head coach and general manage, respectively, are set to embark on a 2026 campaign \u2014 earmarked by a grueling schedule that features seven teams who made the postseason dance last year.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The duo will get to see where the team is thriving and lacking over the course of the initial season of the new era.<\/p>\n The Mendoza Line<\/p>\n Las Vegas decision makers made it abundantly clear the plan is for the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft to sit and learn behind Cousins. The veteran has familiarity with the Raiders head coach and offensive play caller and won\u2019t be behind as much of the eight ball as the rookie.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll see how much of a competition the fight for QB1 really is when the Raiders get knee-deep in training camp and preseason tilts, but it has potential to get very intriguing with a lot of what-ifs.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Such as: What if Mendoza shows he\u2019s the better option as starter heading into the the regular season? What if the Raiders struggle with its strong slate of games, would throwing Mendoza into the fire to speed up development and evaluate the ceiling and floor be proper?<\/p>\n The selection of Mendoza and the eventual success or failure fall squarely on the shoulders of Kubiak and Spytek. For the head coach on development and on the general manager for using prime draft capital on the Indiana quarterback.<\/p>\n Keen Kubiak<\/p>\n As mentioned above, Las Vegas 17-game regular season slate isn\u2019t for the feint of heart. Included in the competitive AFC West matchups are clashes against AFC East and NFC West squads \u2014 including the defending Super Bowl champion Seahawks, that Kubiak and his offensive coordinator Andrew Janocko and offensive line coach Rick Dennison are all too familiar with.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n With the team being lead by a neophyte head coach and coming off a moribund 2025 season, it\u2019s difficult to see the Raiders favored in many games as this juncture. And if the team does struggle in the win-loss column, how Kubiak leads the team in strife. We\u2019ll find out about the head coach\u2019s leadership resilience as he navigates the team through set of games that\u2019ll test Kubiak\u2019s skills on keeping his crew competitive and motivated if losses mount and wins are fleeting.<\/p>\n The early indication of that will be in training camp and cut-down day where teams go from the 90-man squad down to 53.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, well, really never pleased. We could always be better,\u201d Kubiak said when asked about evaluating t he team\u2019s process this offseason. \u201cWe\u2019re always very critical of ourselves with how can we get the most out of every hour for these players in a positive way and let them know that we are not wasting their time. We put in the work for them to give them productive days. So, I think you\u2019re always trying to improve there. We\u2019re off to a solid start.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone\u2019s undefeated right now, right? But we know sooner or later that it\u2019s going to get real competitive and we got to find out who\u2019s the guys we can count on in those stressful situations, coaches included.\u201d<\/p>\n Foundation Focus<\/p>\n The Raiders are not without core foundational players. There\u2019s edge rusher Maxx Crosby<\/a>, tight end Brock Bowers<\/a>, left tackle Kolton Miller<\/a>, and running back Ashton Jeanty<\/a> \u2014 to name a few.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The team\u2019s 2026 performance will tell Spytek \u2014 the chief personnel man \u2014 how his roster reset\/rebuild is taking hold. Namely how Mendoza adapts to the NFL game and if the current core group of players are indeed worth building around or does another pivot need to occur. Spytek spent the sixth overall pick in the 2025 draft to snag Jeanty out of Boise State, but the return on investment (ROI) from the rest of the 2025 class wasn\u2019t great.<\/p>\n Spytek added 10 more prospects over the course of the seven-round draft this past April all with the intent of a Raiders renaissance. Of those 10 picks, six were on the defensive side of the ball. That\u2019s not to diminish the expected contributions from Mendoza, offensive lineman Trey Zuhn III (third round, 91st overall), running back Mike Washington Jr. (fourth round, 122nd overall), and wide receiver Malik Benson (sixth round, 195th overall), but one can argue Rob Leonard\u2019s defense needed more tender loving care (TLC).<\/p>\n Getting more ROI from the previous draft class alongside the latest crop of selected rookies goes a long way into clearly identifying young layers that are legitimate building blocks and their continued tenure with the Silver & Black as contracts near their end.<\/p>\n Tied into that is the coin Spytek and the Raiders doled out in free agency. According to the NFL, Las Vegas dished out $281.5 million in free agency<\/a>. The second most spent was by the Tennessee Titans<\/a> at $270 million. Both teams had massive roster holes and both squads can simply look at the 2025 New England Patriots of an example of a team that spent considerable coin in free agency and hit on draft picks to turn things round quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By all accounts, the Las Vegas Raiders put all their eggs in the Klint Kubiak basket. Sure, there…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":810552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2065],"tags":[1303,797,260,48886,258,3619,7,19674,6496,4949,294,8357,6885,1744,393,2455,2454,6563,6,525,261,394,1369],"class_list":["post-910917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-las-vegas-raiders","tag-ashton-jeanty","tag-brock-bowers","tag-carolina-panthers","tag-davis-webb","tag-denver-broncos","tag-fernando-mendoza","tag-football","tag-gary-kubiak","tag-head-coach","tag-john-spytek","tag-kirk-cousins","tag-klint-kubiak","tag-kolton-miller","tag-las-vegas","tag-las-vegas-raiders","tag-lasvegas","tag-lasvegasraiders","tag-maxx-crosby","tag-nfl","tag-raiders","tag-seattle-seahawks","tag-tennessee-titans","tag-tom-brady"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116699246363249107","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910917","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=910917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}