Now that the coaching carousel has basically stopped spinning, it’s worth taking a look at how and where New Las Vegas Raiders coach Klint Kubiak fits in with multiple major NFL hiring trends. Saad Yousuf of The Athletic recently did a breakdown of this, and it’s worth doing a compare-and-contrast dive into some of the trends he pointed out.
Start with offensive coordinators. Six of the ten coaching hires this year were on that side of the ball, and Kubiak was a leader of that particular pack. Kubiak embodies many of the traits of the Mike Shanahan coaching tree, which makes sense given that he was Shanahan’s passing game coordinator in 2023 with the San Francisco 49ers before joining the New Orleans Saints as offensive coordinator in 2024. He then joined the Seattle Seahawks doing the same job, and now he gets to run the Las Vegas Raiders.
The Shanahan connection also intersects with Gary Kubiak, Klint’s father. He was a quarterback with the Denver Broncos, and Gary is a former quarterback and coach who’s considered the father of the outsize zone run concept, and Klint Kubiak’s knowledge of that system will supposedly make it easer to implement with the Raiders, even though Las Vegas has taken several runs at the outside zone system in recent years without having any success.
The new Raiders coach is also a big believer of under-center formations and heavy personnel sets. Former coach Pete Carroll also believed in under-center work, but the Raiders offensive line was so bad that those under-center snaps went nowhere, especially since coordinator Chip Kelly believed in using a lot of motion to free up different concepts in the passing game.
Look for a lot of play action in Kubiak’s play calling, too. That’s another staple of a Kubiak offense, although it didn’t work as well when opponents started subbing in packages with more defensive backs. That led Kubiak back to improving the run game, and this kind of back and forth development will likely be one of his big goals in Las Vegas.
Heavy sets could be a major strength, though. The Raiders have one of the best tight ends in the league in Brock Bowers, and Mike Mayer was considered a near-elite tight end coming out of Notre Dame who hasn’t really realized his potential.
Finally, Kubiak is known for matching his approach to his personnel, and he did that with receivers Jaxson Smith-Njigba and Cooper Kupp. Kubiak won’t have anywhere near that level of talent in Las Vegas, but the presence of Bowers, Mayer and running back Ashton Jeanty bodes well for what the Raiders new coach likes to do from a philosophical standpoint.