The Las Vegas Raiders rebuild is well underway with new coach Klint Kubiak, second-year GM John Spytek, and minority owner Tom Brady.
To the credit of the Raider brain trust, since Pete Carroll's termination, the franchise has shown exceptional discipline and a commitment to the process, entering 2028 with a playoffs-or-bust internal temperature.
What’s going on? Here are the processes underway.
As Kubiak assembles the remainder of his staff, having already selected his three coordinators, they help the Raiders quickly move on to other facets of the rebuild. This is not to minimize the role of the position coaches, but assembling the three coordinators is the single most impactful hire.
They together finalize the scheme, general tactics, and the tangibles they are looking for at every position on the 53-man roster.
Kubiak said of assembling his staff, “We're trying to put together a great staff of teachers. We got to get some really good teachers and coaches here, and get us all on the same page and get our players going in the same direction. That communication is really important. I think if we can put together a great staff here and get our players up to date on these playbooks and the things we expect of them, then the results speak for themselves after that.”
The Silver and Black have assembled a terrific team of young stars, helping John Spytek. Their ability assemble in-depth analysis of their own team helps the Kubiak staff hit the ground running.
The Raiders staff will develop their scheme as aforementioned above. In the roster evaluation process, the staff now undergoes the difficult task of assessing who fits, who doesn’t, on the current roster in what Kubiak ultimately wishes to accomplish.
After looking at the players currently under contract, Kubiak and his staff, along with the exceptional staff under Spytek, begin the evaluation of the Raiders’ own free agents.
A long list of players that they not only have to evaluate from the standpoint of who fits the scheme and not, but also, with a goal of 2028 or bust for the NFL Playoffs, who will fit in 2028?
It just isn’t who can contribute in 2026, but who will be at the top of their game in 2028?
The Raiders have a unique mulligan, a unicorn in the National Football League, in that they are going to get a two-year mulligan for this rebuild. Because of that, a player peaking in 2026 may not be a fit in 2028, so the team will need to evaluate moving on to a younger player who will benefit from patience and development in 2026 and 2027, with payoff in 2028.
The Raiders have done a thorough evaluation of their own roster as I reported above, but what most are not aware of is that they have done a significant deep-dive on every other roster of the other 31 teams.
Spytek’s exceptional team knows those rosters backwards and forwards, and the Raiders will then begin to explore trades, potential cuts, and which players already in the NFL on other teams could fit with the Silver and Black at a cost that fits within the grand scheme.
There is much more to what is happening right now.
We explore all of that in our latest episode of the Las Vegas Raiders Insider Podcast.
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