Las Vegas Raiders coach Klint Kubiak is also their new play-caller, and he faces a significant question this season.
The NFL coaching carousel can be a remarkable spinning wheel, especially when it comes to new playcallers. An astounding 21 teams will have new offensive coordinators, and they’ll all face unique problems as they do the job for the first time, especially Las Vegas Raiders coach Klint Kubiak.
The Athletic did a piece that featured the one big question each one will be facing, and that question is especially intriguing for new coach Klint Kubiak. It was compiled by Mike Jones, who had some interesting thoughts to offers about what Kubiak will be up against.
Kubiak’s situation seems especially dicey. He’s both the coach and the coordinator in the sense that he’ll still be calling players. Moreover, he has two new quarterbacks to juggle, with veteran Kirk Cousins on track to take the reins early until top draft pick Fernando Mendoza is ready to take over.
How much time will he give Fernando Mendoza to develop?
This is one of the toughest questions to answer with the Raiders, period, because there are so many moving parts and pieces and many of them don’t fit together all that well.
Start with the state of the roster. It was horrible last year, so much so that it cost coach Pete Carroll his job because Carroll thought he was in a position to win right away.
Kubiak knows better. Most of his comments about the roster as a whole have been generic, but Kubiak is one of those self-contained coaches who wouldn’t express his reservations about the roster even if he thought he could.
With the offense specifically, Kubiak has several issues. The first is the state of the offensive line, which couldn’t protect quarterback Geno Smith at all last year. Part of that was due to Smith’s tendency to hold onto the ball for too long, but this is still a big problem regardless.
Then there’s the receiver group. It’s mediocre at best, and Kubiak surely knows that, too. The Raiders spent a lot of money in free agency, but most of it was on the defensive side, and the Raiders decided to pass on adding a top target until the reset of the offense gets fixed.
That brings us to Ashton Jeanty, whose qualifications as a lead back are still very much in doubt. Jeanty is an undersized back who was overdrafted, and he may or may not be able to do what Kubiak says Jeanty can provide, which is the ability to run consistently and play ball control.
All of that means it’s going to take time before Kubiak knows what he has, and it doesn’t feel like this is going to be a situation where Mendoza can get on the field quickly. Right now it feels like it will be midseason, athough the pressure to insert him into the lineup before then will be immense.
