The coaching churn continues for the Las Vegas Raiders, as a report surfaced from Josh Alper of Pro Football Talk that the team will conduct a second interview with Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak before the chaos of Super Bowl week starts.
Alper’s report does contradict what came out earlier in the week, though, which is that the Raiders were doing interviews with Kubiak and others last weekend.
But Las Vegas marches to the beat of Tom Brady’s schedule these days, and the minority owner and Fox Sports analyst is a busy guy who lives in Florida. He was in Miami a couple of weeks ago to watch the national championship game between the Miami Hurricanes and Indiana Hoosiers, and supposedly he had some conversations about the Raiders coaching job in South Florida.
Meanwhile, at least one potential candidate is gone. Joe Brady was one of the rumored interviews from last weekend, but the Buffalo Bills hired Brady’s namesake as their new head coach as he signed a five-year deal.
There’s also a mystery that's popped up with one of the Raiders’ other candidates, Denver Broncos passing coordinator Davis Webb. Broncos coach Sean Payton made some derogatory comments about the Raiders job, but it wasn’t clear whether those were designed to keep Webb from potentially taking the job or just something Payton said off the cuff.
Then Payton fired two of his offensive coaches as part of a staff purge following Denver’s loss in the AFC Championship game. Offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi and receivers coach Keary Colbert were both let go, and it remains unclear if those firings were done to clear a path for Webb to become Payton’s new OC.
As for Kubiak, he’s been largely unavailable to interview to date because the Seahawks are in the Super Bowl. Kubiak’s success with quarterback Sam Darnold has only elevated his value, and it would be silly to think his price and popularity won’t go up accordingly.
That puts the Raiders at risk when it comes to this particular hire. In some ways, this interview with Kubiak will be a test of Tom Brady’s power and pull, as no one really knows what players and coaches think of Brady these days in his dual role as Fox analyst and minority owner.
The remaining candidate is Ejiro Evero, who supposedly interviewed last weekend, but Evero is considered a long shot given that he’s a defensive coordinator,