Ranking The Vacant NFL Head Coaching Jobs
5. Oakland Raiders
The Oakland Raiders may have won three games this season, but I have no problem calling them the NFL’s worst team. Oakland had the league’s worst offense in 2014, averaging a hilarious 282.2 yards per game, and also ranked 21st defensively, allowing 357.6 yards per game. Things have just gotten sad for the Raiders.
Looking at the team’s roster is downright depressing. Other than Khalil Mack, Derek Carr and Sio Moore, who would a sane person retain? Miles Burris? A 57-year-old Charles Woodson? It’s incredibly hard to find guys who look like long-term solutions at their positions on Oakland’s roster.
Carr was solid as a rookie considering he was working with almost nothing around him. He completed 58.1 percent of his passes for 3,270 yards, with 21 touchdowns and 12 interceptions. I’m not convinced he’ll be a star, but he should at least be a solid, long-term starter in the league. Latavius Murray showed some flashes running the ball, but that may have just been a flash in the pan and nothing to get too excited about. It wasn’t sustained success. Meanwhile, the receiving corps is one of the NFL’s worst and the offensive line is average at best.
Defensively the linebackers are a solid, young group with a lot of upside, but that’s about the only positive I can find.
Any candidate considering the Raiders will have to rebuild the entire roster from top to bottom. Sure, Carr and Mack will be your leaders and they are already installed, but after that you’re not going to be working with much. The Raiders will have the fourth pick in the 2015 NFL Draft, so that will help the process, but it’s going to take far more than that to even get started.
The Raiders have become a punchline of a franchise. They play in a crumbling facility, may wind up moving and the leadership of the clownish Davis family has been a national embarrassment. Candidates to become Oakland’s head coach will be keenly aware of the awful situation they will be stepping into.