NFL’s Most Shocking Coaching Hires: Disastrous Former Raiders Head Coach’s New Job Could Mark Stunning Turnaround

The tenure of Josh McDaniels as the Las Vegas Raiders‘ head coach could best be described as disastrous. In fact, the sheer mention of his name still makes Raiders fans angry.

McDaniels was hired as the Raiders’ head coach in 2023, which was at least kind of perplexing at the time considering how big of a disaster he was during his stint as the Denver Broncos‘ head coach.

As many suspected, nothing changed with McDaniels in his second chance as a head coach. After a 6-11 campaign in 2022 and a 3-5 first half of 2023, the Raiders held a team meeting that got ugly, and that was followed by McDaniels getting the axe.

To further show how awful McDaniels was at his job, interim head coach Antonio Pierce, who failed miserably in his first season as the full-time head coach in 2024, took over the same team and went 5-4 over the final nine games.

If you thought all of that was enough to stop teams from considering McDaniels for another job in the NFL, think again. During his introductory press conference on Monday, new New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel admitted that McDaniels is indeed on his “long list” of offensive coordinator candidates.

“Yeah,” Vrabel replied when asked if McDaniels was a candidate for the Patriots’ offensive coordinator vacancy. “It’s a long list. There’s a long list, and, you know, I’ve had a relationship with Josh, and I’ve had relationships with other offensive coaches and defensive coaches that we’re going to interview and wanna bring in here.”

Speaking of Vrabel, despite his relationship with minority owner Tom Brady, the Raiders never pursued him for their vacancy, and the reason had to do with the disastrous tenure of McDaniels and Dave Ziegler in Las Vegas.

“As far as Vrabel, everyone with WiFi service assumed and reported that he was Brady’s guy and would be in the mix for the Raiders job,” Vic Tafur of The Athletic wrote. “But Vrabel wasn’t on the Raiders’ interview list last week. One reason may surprise you. Davis apparently is not interested in another go-round with ‘The Patriots Way’ after the failure of Josh McDaniels and Dave Ziegler two years ago, according to league sources.”

While he is a terrible head coach, McDaniels did have some success as the play-caller during his two stints in New England. Even still, his poor history with players should make him radioactive, even for his former employer.