Klint Kubiak’s first camp in Las Vegas apparently came with a price tag: a brutal workload.
At least one Raiders veteran came away convinced the grind was worth it, according to Raider Nation Radio host Q Myers. Myers said on the Locked on Raiders Squad Show that a player in the locker room described this summer as unlike anything he had been through before.
“I had one player in the locker room telling me, ‘Q, this was the hardest training camp I’ve ever been a part of,” Myers said on the Locked on Raiders Squad Show. “It [was] a veteran [who said] ‘It’s the hardest training camp I’ve ever been a part of, but the hard work that we’re putting in is paying off on the field.’”
That kind of response lines up with the picture general manager John Spytek painted of Kubiak before the season. Spytek praised the new head coach’s day-to-day habits and the way he runs the building.
“[Klint is] very thorough, very detailed, very hardworking,” Spytek said of his first-year head coach during his media availability last week.
“He doesn’t have time… phone calls are about 2 minutes and then you might get hung up on before you actually get a chance to say goodbye,” Spytek continued. “I just appreciate he’s the same guy every day.
He challenges the guys. He holds them accountable.
There’s a discipline to the way that he sets up a schedule and what he demands of the players that I think is consistent with the really good coaches that I’ve been around.”
The defensive side is turning heads, too.
Rob Leonard is in his first season as a coordinator, but he’s not exactly new to the league. He started his NFL coaching career with the New York Giants in 2013, spent 2023 as the Raiders’ defensive line coach, and entered this year with a strong recommendation from people inside the building, including Maxx Crosby.
Kubiak knew most of his top assistants before hiring them, but Leonard was the outlier. Even with only one game on his coordinator résumé, he delivered one of the Raiders’ most encouraging defensive showings in a while against the Miami Dolphins on Sunday.
Leonard has also spent time around some of the league’s most respected defensive minds, including Seattle’s Mike Macdonald, and that showed in the opener.
After what the source described as a vanilla defensive approach under Pete Carroll in 2025, the Raiders opened Week 1 by making noise in a big way. Ian Hartitz noted on X that Las Vegas finished first in the league in “Havoc” for Week 1 at 56%, ahead of the Vikings at 55% and the Cardinals at 51%.
That’s the kind of opening statement the Raiders were looking for: hard camp, disciplined coaching, and a defense that came out flying.
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Brock Bowers Return Puts Raiders In A Tough Early Decision
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There is optimism that Bowers could be back as soon as this week, but the more likely path appears to be a cautious one that points toward Week 3 or Week 4. For a Raiders offense that wants its top young playmaker available for the long haul, the choice is less about getting him back immediately and more about deciding when the risk of an early return starts to outweigh the benefit. [Read more 🡒]