Reports say that a “vicious” team meeting “broke” Josh McDaniels before he was fired as Raiders coach.
On Halloween night, the Raiders fired coach Josh McDaniels without warning, ending his job after just two and a half losing seasons.
Fox Sports says that an argumentative team meeting a few days ago pretty much sealed his fate.
Jay Glazer wrote on Sunday, “There was such a big disconnect between the players there and Josh McDaniels.”
“The players had just returned upstairs to speak with the owner, Mark Davis, to share with him what their issues were.”
Glazer says that eventually, coaches and players got together during the week for a “airing of the grievances” where “players just unloaded in Josh McDaniels, from captain to team leader to player to player.”
At the end, McDaniels reportedly told Antonio Pierce, the linebackers coach, to “get up and speak for him.”
But Pierce, a former star player for the Giants, is said to have used New York’s past Super Bowl wins over the Patriots as inspiration, which made McDaniels, who has been offensive coordinator for New England for a long time, angry.
It got really bad on Halloween when angry Raiders fans called for the team to fire head coach Josh McDaniels.
The move by owner Mark Davis to fire both McDaniels along with general manager Dave Ziegler came as a bit of a surprise.
Soon after the move became public, however, things didn’t get much better when looking back at McDaniels’ time as head coach.
Another story from NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport says that McDaniels’ open-floor meeting with players didn’t very go as planned.
“… Sources within the building told us that Matthews’ firing did not come as much of a surprise to them. It starts with practice last Thursday, before the Lions lost.
McDaniels’ team had just had a very bad meeting. “It was ugly, and players and coaches told him they didn’t like it,” Rapoport said in NFL Network’s “The Insiders.”
“After a couple of hours, he was said to be “not himself” at practice. He was far away, and he didn’t fix the plays that were going on.
It was like he was there physically but not in spirit, according to the people I’ve talked to. It broke him.
Ian Rapoport of NFL Network says the meeting happened hours before practice on Thursday.
Players were said to have called it a “Kumbaya meeting,” although it looked more like a fight, with coaches and players taking turns “ripping” McDaniels for almost every part of your teaching style.
Reports say McDaniels didn’t say much in the meeting while he heard complaints about how, among other things, he overcorrected problems upon the field, constantly faulted players for problems with play-calling, and conducted meetings that were too long.
A few hours later, at practice, McDaniels allegedly tried to use some of the other players’ feedback by playing music and not saying anything during practice.
But Rapoport said that McDaniels was “a shell of himself” following the meeting. It was said that the difference in how he behaved was so “stark” that it seemed like McDaniels was not really there.
Because of that, it’s not a surprise that his fate was sealed when the Raiders lost 26–14 against the Detroit Lions on the Monday night. It was said that everyone in the company agreed that he should be fired.
One more thing about the meeting came to light Sunday morning from Jay Glazer of Fox Sports.
He said that Antonio Pierce, whose was hired as temporary head coach following McDaniels was fired, spoke for McDaniels at the meeting.
Pierce is said to have talked about the 2007 New York Giants team the fact that beat the McDaniels’ unbeaten New England Patriots within the Super Bowl.
He said that the Giants had a plan and really thought they would prevail no matter who they played.
He said that wasn’t how the Raiders were, and that they needed to make their own style. It was said that McDaniels told Pierce not to talk about the Patriots in that way again after the talk was over.
Even though a player from the 2007 Giants team was proud to talk about what his team had done, McDaniels was still worried about how the Patriots were talked about, even after every word that was said and felt in that meeting. His job was in serious danger.