The Las Vegas Raiders are making some much-needed changes, and one of the biggest ones is the personality shift that players will be experiencing under new coach Klint Kubiak, assuming his hire goes through smoothly after today’s Super Bowl.
He doesn’t really have much of a reputation nationally going into this game, so a horde of reporters have been busy this week digging up some details about how the Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator coaches and presents himself. He was described as “low key and understated” by receiver Cooper Kupp, but Seahawks tight ends coach Mack Brown says Kubiak is no pushover.
"When he walks in the room, he commands respect," said Brown, in a piece written by Brady Henderson of ESPN. "The fact that he may not be this guy who's jumping up and down on the sideline doesn't mean when he's in the meeting room that everybody's not locked into him and respects him."
That’s a variation on a standard line, of course, but Kupp also added that Kubiak won’t accept “bad football,” which means the new coach’s self-contained personality will quickly be challenged in Las Vegas.
"He gets fired up, like for a very short amount of time," Kupp said. "He snaps right back into that same character afterwards."
Kubiak also likes to delegate, which could present a different set of issues with the Raiders. One of the reasons Kubiak was hired in Seattle is because his predecessor, former offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb, was reluctant to delegate. That won’t be the case with Kubiak, though, as virtually every member of his staff had glowing comments about his ability to let them design plays, and he also had a reputation for altering his system to fit the personnel.
That does raise an interesting question for the Raiders, though. One of the reasons the Pete Carroll hire went sideways is because the staff was something of a hodgepodge, with Carroll’s son, Brennan, coaching the offensive line, and offensive coordinator Chip Kelly paired with Carroll in the coaching version of a shotgun marriage.
Assuming Kubiak gets to hire his own staff, though, where will they come from? The coaching carousel has been winding down for the last week or so, and most of the hot coordinators are gone. Kubiak could be coaching with leftovers as his assistants, rather than the diverse staff that was assembled by Seattle coach Mike McDonald.
The biggest thing Kubiak will need, though, is patience. He’ll be seeing plenty of bad football, especially early on with a rookie quarter back in Fernando Mendoza. He’ll also be joining an organization that has plumbed new depths lately when it comes to ineptness, and turning things around will be a massive task indeed.