Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh Could Be Among Raiders’ Coaching Candidates

Owner Mark Davis seriously considered the Wolverines’ coach in 2022. Plus, answering questions about the futures of Ron Rivera, Bill Belichick and Matt LaFleur in this week’s mailbag.

Fun trade deadline day is in the books, and we’re digging through your questions after a busy week. Let’s go …

From Ronnie (@Tray4o): Who are your early candidates for Raiders head coach in 2024?

Ronnie, I think the first thing the Raiders will look for is a true battleship commander, which is what they’re trying to get in promoting linebackers coach Antonio Pierce to interim coach. Clearly, the guys in that locker room have been through a lot over the past three years under Jon Gruden and Josh McDaniels, and so having someone who can galvanize and create a real identity for the team is job No. 1 for owner Mark Davis.

Which brings us to the most obvious name—Jim Harbaugh.

The Michigan coach cut his coaching teeth in 2002 and ’03 in Oakland on Bill Callahan’s staff, and Davis made a hard run at him in ’15 before Harbaugh turned down the job to return to his alma mater. Davis seriously considered it again in ’22, even interviewing Colts exec Ed Dodds (who worked with Harbaugh in Oakland, and is thought to be held in very high regard by the coach) as a potential GM pairing for Harbaugh before getting down the road with McDaniels and Dave Ziegler for the open positions.

If not Harbaugh, Davis could consider Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, Cowboys defensive coordinator Dan Quinn, Patriots linebackers coach Jerod Mayo or even Jets defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich. Again, all four guys would fit that battleship-commander bill. Then, there’s the idea of trying to lure Patriots coach Bill Belichick, with so much of his infrastructure left over in place from the McDaniels era (Belichick, for what it’s worth, revered Mark Davis’s dad)—if Davis is willing to dip into that well again.

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It’s an attractive job, too, as I see it, in that the stadium and facility are A-plus, and Las Vegas is a tax-free state and city that’s desirable for players (though there’s another side to that, too, in needing to have guys who can handle living in Vegas on the roster). We’ll see how Davis handles all of this.

From Tyler Green (@TylerGreennnn): Why would Davis fire McDaniels and GM Dave Ziegler after the trade deadline and not before? Wouldn’t that have given them a head start on rebuilding?

Simple, Tyler. Davis thinks his team can contend, and so rather than tear the whole thing down, he’s trying to give guys such as Maxx Crosby, Davante Adams, Kolton Miller and Josh Jacobs the best shot he can at winning. Which, in this case, he’s trying to do by putting a coach he thinks can galvanize the group in charge.

From Tom Marshall (@aredzonauk): Is this the end for Jimmy Garoppolo as a starting QB?

Tom, it’s hard to see this any other way—Garoppolo didn’t look nearly as explosive as a passer the other night than he was at his peak, and labored to move around. And his injury history is pretty damning. He’s only made it through one full season without missing games due to injury. And in five of the seven seasons in which he’s started games, he’s missed games due to injury (2018 and 2020 being the exceptions).

He also turns 33 next year.

So I think the Raiders cut him after the year, and he collects the $11.25 million parting gift of future guaranteed money from the team, and then he goes onto a stage of his career where he’s a backup–bridge guy, presuming he has the desire. Garoppolo, to be sure, has been a pretty good quarterback over the past seven years. But not enough to override the injury risk he brings, and especially if what we saw the other night is now simply what he is.

From Cam Gravina (@cgrav05): Why do you suppose the Patriots didn’t sell anyone yesterday? Does standing pat mean Belichick is back next year?

Cam, I think the Patriots were one of the teams that had designs on selling, but came away underwhelmed by what the buyers were putting out there—and they were in that boat. Josh Uche came closest to being dealt. He was one of the edge rushers Seattle looked at before acquiring Leonard Williams (who’s more of an interior lineman), and New England got calls on Kyle Dugger, too.

In these situations, it can often come down to a team deciding it’d rather have the half season left on a player’s contract than a Day 3 pick, which is understandable.

The problem for the Patriots is where this leaves them. They’ll have around $100 million in cap space this offseason, with the chance to spend to upgrade the roster in a big way. If they do so, it’ll cancel out the compensatory picks they could get for their pending free agents. So in all likelihood, this is the only shot they had to get a return for those guys. Which leaves them with one pick in each round, and the likelihood they’ll be without any comp picks this year, either (since they gained more than they lost in free agency in 2023).

So where you might say, Well, it’d have only been a fourth-rounder for Uche, that fourth-rounder could be a value chip to help the team move around in the first couple rounds without creating huge gaps between picks. This, as you probably know, is a team with a lot of holes to fill, and a roster begging for an infusion of youth. Now, instead of optimizing that, they’ll have a handful of very solid contract-year guys playing out the string.

From Omar (@TAOShinaishin): Does the Commanders’ trade deadline seal Ron Rivera’s fate?

Omar, no, it doesn’t. But make no mistake about this: Washington trading its defensive ends, Chase Young and Montez Sweat, has new owner Josh Harris’s fingerprints on it. And this starts with the two players in question. Both are enormous talents, and each was, well, less than perfect during their time in Washington.

With Young, there was the feeling he’d played selfishly at times, protecting himself in some spots, and too aggressively seeking big plays in others. And while his knee is healthy now, and he’s regained most of his explosiveness, there was concern his catastrophic injury of 2021 would create lingering issues. With Sweat, there were some consistency issues, though most folks in the building regarded him as a good-hearted guy.

The biggest thing with each was how they would fit into longer-term planning. With the hope that the Commanders had found their quarterback in Sam Howell, the idea was to build up the middle—such as Rivera did in Carolina—and invest more around Howell moving forward. And with so much already invested in Daron Payne and Jonathan Allen, it was going to be tough to throw, say, $25 million a year at either of the defensive ends. So when the calls started coming leading up to the deadline, Commanders’ brass resolved to listen.

Anyway, that led into Tuesday, with Harris’s expectation that at least one of the two would be moved, and that both could be, if a great case wasn’t made for keeping one. Now, the Commanders have two top-100 (or so) picks coming back for them. Whether Rivera, GM Martin Mayhew and EVP player personnel Marty Hurney are making those picks is anyone’s guess, and it certainly won’t be easy for those guys to make their case for staying without two blue-chip talents being taken out of a loaded defensive line room.

But there is a flip side, and it’s that if Rivera and his staff can keep the Commanders in the race, and make the playoffs without those two, it does say something about their ability to coach and lead and win in the long term. That’s presuming, of course, that Harris hasn’t already made up his mind.

From Adam Wells (@DCHamSandwich): Was Washington close to trading anyone else? Kendall Fuller, Antonio Gibson or maybe Jacoby Brissett?

Adam, they had talks with plenty of people about their roster. And the defensive ends, who’d really drawn interest for the past two weeks, were the two that they were willing to part with and had significant value on the market.

They did discuss moving Brissett with other teams, but they wanted a pick in the Day 2 range, which was way too much as those other teams saw it. And as we said earlier, the logic in dealing the defensive ends was to clear out room to build around Howell. And there was less reason to wash out the other positions. So, simple as this sounds, the best move to both build for 2024 and beyond, and maintain some semblance of the core they’ve built, was to do what they did.

From Self Loving Lions Fan (@WhoAmI_1976): Were the Detroit Lions in on any of the “name” trade candidates?

Lions Fan, the one position I’d heard Detroit had interest was edge rusher.

There were options. Young and Sweat could’ve been had. A third, or maybe even a fourth, would’ve probably landed Aidan Hutchinson’s former Michigan teammate, Josh Uche, from the Patriots. But the Lions don’t have the surplus of picks they’ve had in recent years—they’re slated to carry a total of seven into the April’s 2024 NFL draft—and so I can understand why they wouldn’t go overboard to add now.

There’s also the fact that those guys would’ve required new contracts. And if you don’t see them as building blocks that way, then that’s another reason to stand pat with what you have on the roster. Remember, Lions GM Brad Holmes worked under Les Snead with the Rams, and was there for midseason moves to acquire guys such as Jalen Ramsey, Odell Beckham Jr., and Dante Fowler. So, it’s not like he has a built-in aversion to going all in building his roster.

From Zeze (@Zezex0_0): Did the Cardinals consider dealing Kyler Murray? Or were any teams really interested in his availability?

Zeze, absolutely, I think the Cardinals would’ve considered it.

The reality is that no one was trading for that contract. And that’s best illustrated when you look at what it’d take for Arizona to get out of the deal.

• If the Cardinals cut Murray after this season, they’ll owe him $35.3 million that’s already fully guaranteed for 2024.

• If the Cardinals opt to keep Murray for 2024, they’ll have to pay him $38.85 million. If they then decide to release him after ’24, they’d owe him $29.9 million for ’25 (money that vests in ’24) as a de facto buyout.

• If they keep him for 2025, they’ll have to pay him another $32.6 million. And if they cut him after that year, they’d owe him $36.8 million for ’26 (money that vests in ’25).

A team acquiring Murray would assume all of that. So keeping him just for this year and cutting him after the season, for a new team, would cost a tick over $36.4 million (with the $1.1 million left on his base for this year, and the Cardinals having already paid him $37 million in bonus money). Keeping him for a year and a half would cost nearly $70 million. Keeping him for two-and-a-half years would cost almost $110 million.

That’s why Murray was untradeable this week—even if the Cardinals wanted to move him.

From Coryromell (@coryromell): Does the Matt LaFleur era in Green Bay possibly come to an end if the team doesn’t show any progression? It seems like the team is regressing weekly.

Cory, that’d be a massive overreaction, as I see it.

LaFleur won 13 games in each of his first three years in charge in Green Bay. In his fourth year, with roster turnover, and a flood of injuries, the Packers went 8–9. They’re now 2–5, so the trend lines don’t look great. But to say all the good of the first four years of the LaFleur era was all Rodgers, and all the bad now lays at the feet of the coaching staff is ignoring the job LaFleur and his assistants have done creating systems that fit the talent (Rodgers included) on both sides of the ball, and how they’ve developed that talent.

Now, if after 2024, you’ve had two bad years, and Jordan Love is on his way out, and there’s no direction at quarterback, and some of the aforementioned talent is aging out, maybe we have a different discussion. But looking at the breadth of the past five seasons, LaFleur has done a good job of navigating a sticky setup, and getting the most out of Rodgers at a time when the quarterback’s situation was constantly in flux.

So in the words of a pretty famous Packer: Relax.

From Tom Marshall (@aredzonauk): Are the Jaguars looming as serious contenders in the AFC?

Tom, the Jaguars are legit. They’re 6–2, including five straight wins. They won four games in an 18-day stretch, two of those in London, with the last on the road on a Thursday night. Trevor Lawrence is becoming the quarterback we thought he could be, and the roster around him is balanced and ascending.

Bottom line: Jacksonville should run away with the AFC South and be a real threat to the established conference heavyweights in Buffalo, Cincinnati and Kansas City in the playoffs.