Former Las Vegas Raiders general manager Mike Mayock spoke 3 and Out with John Middlekauff’s podcast about being fired from the Raiders.
Mayock Speaks
“You come off something where you think – you inherit a four-win team and three years later, you win 10,” Mayock said on the April 2 episode of “3 & Out.”. “You’re on the 9-yard line against the Super Bowl Cincinnati Bengals with a chance to tie the game with four downs in 35 seconds. We didn’t get it done. So, I kind of came off that season thinking, ‘OK, it was a crazy year.’… Jon Gruden got fired. Henry Ruggs was in that awful accident that killed a woman. We had a lot of bad things happen, and Rich Bisaccia was unbelievable, and to this day, I can’t believe he’s not a head coach in the NFL.
“And I think Rich and I saw things the same way, and I think we saw that there could have been a future there, building on that playoff team. So, getting fired – I kind of, I was like, ‘Wow.’ I understand there can be individual criticism on some of the draft picks, and I certainly understand why. Not everybody knows why guys got picked when they got picked.”
End-of-Season Strech
“We were 6-7 at one point, and I’m sure Mark Davis was sitting there thinking, ‘I’m going to move on.’ And we were able to win the last four, we were the No. 5 seed in the AFC, and we gave the Raiders their second playoff team in 21 years,” Mayock said. “So, I think there was some optimism between Rich and I and the coaching staff and the scouting staff that we were going to build something.”
After the Raiders’ playoff appearance, Mayock and Rich Bisaccia were let go in favor of Dave Ziegler and Josh McDaniels, which proved to be the wrong move.
More must-reads: