Three weeks into the season, Klint Kubiak has already pushed himself into the conversation as one of the NFL’s hottest head coaches, and the Raiders appear to have landed a strong hire.
What’s stood out early is not just how prepared Kubiak looks, but how tightly he runs everything. Around the Raiders, information does not seem to drift far from the building.
That point came up this week on Raider Nation Radio, where JT the Brick described the current staff as unusually closed off.
“The coach is buttoned up. That means his coaches are buttoned up,” JT said on flagship radio show on Thursday.
“You don’t a bunch of coaches on X with their thumbs going crazy telling you how great they are. I talked to Mark Davis one-on-one about this the other day, about the way this coach and this staff conducts themselves, and how buttoned up they are. And everybody knows that.”
That same theme showed up in a Yahoo Sports column from Jori Epstein, who wrote about how teams work to keep information from falling into the wrong hands. She noted that some clubs store quarterback signals in a Google document, but said Kubiak took things much further last year in Seattle.
“Not everyone relies on a signals Google Doc like the Steelers do,” Epstein reported this week.
“The Seahawks last year tracked their signals in a hard-copy notebook, quarterback Drew Lock told Yahoo Sports, as then-offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak also limited weekly game plans to hard copies that were shredded in the corner of the room after each contest. No secrecy measure spared.”
For Raiders fans who have watched this team over the past few years, the lack of leakage has been hard to miss. Kubiak’s public comments have been just as guarded, with press conferences offering little more than what Bill Belichick used to provide in New England.
In Other News...
Raiders Fans Face A Familiar Allegiant Problem Before Chiefs Game
When Allegiant Stadium opened, Raiders fans were told it would give the team a true home-field edge in Las Vegas. Instead, Sundays against Kansas City have often turned into a familiar sight, with plenty of red in the stands and visiting fans making the trip well in advance of kickoff. With the Chiefs coming to town again on Sunday, the Raiders are once more bracing for a crowd that will not look especially friendly.
Raider Nation Radio host JT the Brick has been pushing a message Raiders fans have heard before: keep the tickets in Raiders hands and do not let them end up with opposing fans. Projections suggest 64 percent of the crowd will be wearing silver and black, which would make the Chiefs contingent a little smaller than in some previous meetings, but the bigger question for Las Vegas remains the same. At Allegiant, the home crowd has had to fight to sound and feel like one for a while now. [Read more 🡒]
Raiders Get A Brock Bowers Twist Right Before Chiefs Game
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The good news for the Raiders is that Bowers is still expected to play, even after being listed questionable. He already worked through an early-season absence after a meniscus trim and came back with a strong showing in Week 3, so Las Vegas has reason to believe this latest issue is more of a brief nuisance than a real setback. [Read more 🡒]
Raiders Make Intriguing Chiefs Gameday Shakeup With Young Talent Involved
Aidan OConnell is back in the mix for the Raiders on Sunday, and his return to emergency third-quarterback duty was part of a noticeable Week 4 shuffle as Las Vegas adjusted its game-day roster for the trip to face Kansas City. The bigger personnel wrinkle for the Raiders came on the defensive side, where rookie Dalton Johnson was active for the first time and stepped in at safety, giving the coaching staff a fresh look in the secondary.
Las Vegas also turned to JJ Pegues over Jonah Laulu, another sign that the Raiders were willing to make some young-player decisions on a short week of roster management. It all comes against a Chiefs team missing starting left tackle Josh Simmons, a development that could influence how the matchup unfolds up front even before the Raiders get a chance to test their own new combinations on defense. [Read more 🡒]