The Las Vegas Raiders season seemed to be over a long time ago, but interim head coach Rich Bisaccia has put his team in a position to beat all odds.
The same odds have Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor and Green Bay Packers’ Matt Lafleur as the favorites to win the NFL Coach of the Year award.
Taylor has done a magnificent job with the Bengals, winning the division when everyone had them finishing last.
Lafleur on the other hand has had three 13-game winning seasons with the Packers, with current and favorite MVP, Aaron Rodgers, and a well-loaded squad.
But none of them have had to go through the troubled road of what Coach Bisaccia has gone through to reach the success he has accomplished.
An unbelievable story…
Upon the resignation of Jon Gruden back on Oct. 11, the Raiders elevated special teams coordinator [Bisaccia] to take over the head coaching duties.
Having no head coaching experience, no one really expected the Raiders to be in a position like the one they are now.
The Raiders could have closed their doors and packed their bags early, instead Bisaccia huddled his team together and began to salvage the season one day at a time.
The season seemed catastrophic with the departure of Coach Gruden, but a month after his resignation, receiver Henry Ruggs III was involved in a tragic car accident that killed a woman and her dog.
A few days after Rugg's accident, former first-rounder Damon Arnette, an often injured cornerback, was released by the Raiders after a video of him flashing guns and making death threats surfaced online.
With a difficult task in hand, Bisaccia would carry on the season coaching the Raiders to a 9-7 record with one win away from reaching the playoffs, something a regular head coach has not accomplished since 2016.
“But otherwise history has not been kind to interim coaches. Since 1960, the start of the game’s modern era, there have been 87 interim coaches in the NFL. Only 16 of them managed to win more games than they lost during their interim stints. Only two of the 87 took teams to the playoffs during those interim seasons,” said SI’s Talk of Fame writer Rick Gosselin in an article published in 2018.
His head coaching record of 6-5, has Bisaccia in the upper list of successful interim head coaches, and on Sunday he has a chance of joining a rare list of interim’s to reach the playoffs.
The record books do not and will not display the troubles an interim head coach goes through.
What Bisaccia has done, deserves to be recognized and under consideration for Coach of the Year, an award that represents more than just wins, but the impact the coach has implemented on the team. Something Coach Bisaccia has done sincerely to the men wearing the Silver and Black.
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