How Quickly Can Ben Johnson Rebuild The Raiders?

Hello boys and girls Raider Nation, Bears fans, if you're watching, welcome back to another edition of Raiders Daily on Bleacher Report. We got so much to talk about. You know I will say super grateful to be here on Bleacher Report when they said you're gonna go two times a week Thursday and Friday back to back. Part of me was like it's gonna be interesting to try to not repeat myself from Thursday to Friday and come up with different topics all the time. But what's something that you realize really fast when you're a Raider fan is that every single day brings another chapter into the news cycle, into the drama of being a Raider fan because there is so so much to talk about. Now if you're watching live on Bleacher Report, thank you so much for joining me on here. Make sure we're getting our comments in the comment section. If you are watching after the fact on my YouTube channel, again make sure you're commenting away. It's not live but I still read every single comment. I take everything into account. I know you're gonna agree with some of these takes, disagree, all that to say today's topic of discussion is, if you read the title of this, what kind of rebuild that the Raiders gonna have. Now I will be honest with you and a couple weeks ago if you told me that I'd be acting like this I would have said you were crazy and probably punched you in the face. But I'm going to attack this topic as if Ben Johnson is going to be the next Raiders head coach. There's a lot of smoke suggesting such. Last week or two weeks ago it was it was an impossibility and then he gets the interview and they're like maybe if Brady sways him and now it's gaining momentum. Some people that are in the know are reporting that a deal might already be in place for like a lot of money. So we'll get into all that. We're gonna get into some potential free agent slash draft combinations. I just want to make sure that I'm going live here and I am live. Okay the first thing I want to discuss right away because, and I'm bringing up the report here on my phone, a lot of things happened. I would say I think it was yesterday or two days ago and I know we talk a lot about coaching candidates which is why we'll move on from this in a second. But you know like I said a couple weeks ago you would have told me I'm feeling this way about us potentially signing Ben Johnson. I would have said you were crazy. A couple days ago Ian Rappaport was talking about Aaron Glenn and Ben Johnson. He talked about Aaron Glenn maybe going to the Jets, the Saints, who knows right? Then Ben Johnson came up and what he said was there are people in the league, agents, other coaching candidates that think it's a done deal. He's going to the Las Vegas Raiders. And again when you hear something like that as a Raider fan who's dealt with so much negativity with little centimeter sized drips of positivity, you can't help but immediately think this can't be true, this can't be true, this can't be true. But I think this was today on Profile Focus. Mike Florio who we know historically has lots of nice things to say about the Raiders said this. Okay this is actually on Wednesday, excuse me. Noted on Wednesday that a rumor made its way to him. Now this is a rumor. This is a rumor. This isn't like a scoop. This is a hot rumor. The rumor stated that the Raiders have offered an alleged massive deal to land Ben Johnson as their next head coach. And while it's premature for offers to be officially made, this is a quote, the talk is out there that a big number is unofficially out there. And then this article which is from Raiders Ramble goes on to say if that is the case, Ben Johnson and the Raiders are as close to a sure thing as it gets. The pairing may already be a sure thing with or without a current deal in place. And I know that, how much do I want to get into this specifically? I know that there's a lot of discourse right now about Tom Brady's involvement with Fox and him calling the game that the Lions are about to play in in the playoffs and that it's an unfair advantage for Tom Brady to be talking to Ben Johnson in this situation. Here's a couple takes that I have on that. I didn't know that the media and the NFL fandom were so gung ho about every little tweak and nook and cranny in the rule book until the Raiders were potentially about to get Ben Johnson. I didn't know that everybody cared so much about all this. Very interesting to me. The second thing I want to discuss is this, if Tom Brady wanted Aaron Glenn to be the next head coach of the Raiders and he was calling the Lions game and there was a chance that he was going to talk to Aaron Glenn, no disrespect to Aaron Glenn, but he's the other coordinator in this game. I don't think anybody would care about the advantage that Tom Brady had talking to Aaron Glenn and Ben Johnson. I don't think anybody would care that he's swaying Aaron Glenn by being near him for this game. I think it's because it's Ben Johnson involved with the Raiders specifically. Now, I'm not one of these people that has this tinfoil hat theory that the media hates the Raiders. I do not co-sign that for one second, but it is very strange to see people like Adam Scheffner so heated about the idea of Ben Johnson, the number one coaching candidate the last two cycles, going to Las Vegas. If you saw the video that came out where Adam Scheffner was like, if you want to go coach the Raiders against these other three coaches, good luck to you. I don't see how that makes a whole lot of sense. I didn't know that everybody cared so much about this guy going to potentially coach the Raiders. The last thing I'll say about, is there an advantage to having Tom Brady in your front office? You're dang right there's an advantage. The point that I'm making is this, if you were the Chicago Bears, the Jacksonville Jaguars, the New York Jets, New Orleans Saints, any of these organizations that had a place in your front office or ownership that can be given to Tom Brady, you could have given part of your team to Tom Brady. It wasn't Shad Khan, or the owner of any of these other teams, or Ryan Poles that decided, we're going to go get Tom Brady to be a part of our organization. It was Mark Davis. If there's any advantage within the confines of the rule book that Tom Brady gives to the Raiders, that has all to do with the Raiders going out and saying, hey Tom, you want to be a part of our organization? Now, all of a sudden, a lot of people who wanted Ben Johnson, that might be Bears fans, are all of a sudden like, you know what? I didn't even want him anyway. You could have him. I don't even want him. Very, very interesting. I got to tell you, it has the ultimate vibe of, I'm breaking up with you. You're not breaking up with me. I'm breaking up with you. You didn't fire me. I quit. You're not firing me. All of a sudden, because Ben Johnson wants to push himself to be in the same conference as an Andy Reid, or Sean Payton, or Jim Harbaugh. He's delusional, and he doesn't know a thing about football. It's very interesting. Then there was that classic report that came in from ThinAir that said that Ben Johnson wanted to win games with Sam Howell, and he didn't want to draft him. There's a lot of shade getting thrown at the Raiders and Tom Brady and Ben Johnson, and it feels like it's coming out of a place of jealousy. I don't want to spend too much time on that, although I've already spent nine minutes on it. I'm going to put this first poll out here. The first poll is pretty simple. What is your confidence level that Ben Johnson will be the next head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders? Because again, before I started this new group of live streams, on Bleacher Report, at night, prime time, I would have said, too good to be true. I was saying it in my Discord for the longest time, too good to be true. But now, with all the reports and Florio saying that we already threw a number his way, and it's a massive one. That's another thing, by the way. It's not fair that Tom Brady, they're just going to steal Ben Johnson. They're probably going to pay him $90 million. You got that money, Chicago? Pony it up. If you want Ben Johnson, and you have a better sell, if you're the Jets, the Saints, the Bears, the Jacks, he's not just going to sign with the Raiders because Tom Brady's in his ear. He's going to do what's best for himself, for his family. So the idea that it's like, oh, Tom Brady put a magic spell under him. They fired Tom Telesco, who had a very good draft. They made sacrifices to put themselves in this position. It's like the social network. What's that line that Jesse Eisenberg always says? If you were the inventors of Facebook, you would have invented Facebook. If you were the landing spot for Ben Johnson, he'd be signing with you. End of story. EOC, end of conversation. I see 67% say 50-50, 33% say done deal, but nobody now is saying too good to be true. By the way, I want to see those comments in there, if you are watching. I want to see you guys commenting away. Who's in here? Who's in here? Now that I got that off my chest a little bit, another thing that Schaeffner said, now I didn't know Schaeffner was so heatily opinionated about the Ben Johnson of it all. Another thing that Schaeffner said was he doesn't foresee the Raiders having a commander's type rebuild situation, or the Houston Texans, where you sign your head coach, you draft your quarterback, and bang, you're in the playoffs. Now, I agree with him. I totally agree with him, especially with the division that we're in. As if staying in the NFC North would be any easier going up against KOC, Kevin O'Connell, Matt LaFleur, and Dan Campbell. Yeah, that's a walk in the park. Maybe that's why he doesn't want to go to Chicago. Maybe he doesn't think Gale Williams is that good because Jayden Daniels is clearly better than him. Dregg May might be better than him. All right, I'm off the Chicago thing. If Ben Johnson is 80% as good as people think he is and follows the parameters of the Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, Matt LaFleur, Mike McDaniel, if he falls along that spectrum, if he's right in the middle or if he's upper echelon of that, it's not going to be a snap your fingers type rebuild. The reason for that is because these situations, these organizations, the commanders, the Houston Texans, or when McVay took over, Goff was already there. They have a chance to get their franchise quarterback, or the franchise quarterback is already in place. A situation that did not have that was the San Francisco 49ers, or the Detroit Lions. We thought Jared Goff, is he good? Is he not good? I don't know. At the time, we didn't know. If you remember when Shanahan took over for the 49ers, they traded for Jimmy Garoppolo. Lynch and Shanahan came in together. They came off a terrible season with the 49ers. They traded for Jimmy Garoppolo. Jimmy was hurt. He came in at the end of the season, won a couple of games, and they won like six and 10, something like that. Five and 12, five and 11. I can't remember, 16 games, 17 games. Then the next year, boom, NFC Championship. The Lions took a while to build it up. They didn't have Aiden Hutchinson the first year. They didn't have Amara the first year. They just had Goff and a bunch of, eh. Jameer Gibbs came in. LaPorta came in. It took a while. Penny Sewell was the first big guy they drafted, physically big and big for the franchise. When Adam Scheffner says, I just don't see a way in which the Raiders can flip this thing on its head, I don't think that's going to be the plan. I think Tom Brady laid out the future, along with Mark Davis and Jed Hughes, to say, we expect you to grow this thing gradually. We're not just going to quick fix it with Gruden or AP. We're not going to slap a Band-Aid on this thing. We're going to put the organization in the hospital. We're going to get it its IV. We're going to get it the right medicine and the nutrients that it needs. We're going to build this thing. We're going to grow it. But we do have some cornerstones like Max Crosby, like Brock Bowers, Jacobi Meyers to a lesser degree, Christian Wilkins to a lesser degree, $100 million in cap space, and the sixth pick in the draft. So my question to the jury is this. What style of rebuild do you expect? Not what style of rebuild do you want? What do you foresee happening with Ben Johnson here? I said AFC championship in two years. I do think there's a world in which it feels more like the 49ers, but it's not quite the AFC championship in two years just because the AFC championship is top heavy. It's stacked. The NFC is more sporadically layered out in terms of its pedigree of really good football teams. In the AFC, you have the Chiefs and the Ravens and the Bills. And then it gets kind of weird with the Texans and the Chargers and the Bengals and the Steelers, the Dolphins. There's a lot going on in the AFC. Now, I do not think it's going to be that commander's type instant flip of the switch unless there is a world where we trade up to get Cam Ward or Shador or one of them falls to us and we hit, or less likely Jackson, or Milrow in the second round, and they hit. To me, it feels like they're going to go veteran with the quarterback this season, although we'll talk about Shador maybe falling to us in a little bit. It feels like they're going to go veteran, whether that is a Sam Darnold for 30-ish million. I said I'd take him for 35. People were like, you're insane. And apparently, that's the starting point, 35. I'd make him the 17th highest quarterback in terms of annual total salary. If the Vikings tag him, he'll be making 41.2. If he makes 35, that's 2.5 million less than Derek Carr. Not that much money. Veteran that Ben Johnson thinks he could win with, Aaron Rodgers, Kirk Cousins, I don't know. There's a lot of people out there. And we're going to build this thing. If Ben Johnson takes over and he is that upper echelon, play-calling, decent head coach, and he can get a Robert Sala to be his DC, or I've seen the linebackers coach from the Bucs, I forget the guy's name, thrown around. If they get hit on a couple draft picks, whether that's Spytek or this executive from the Packers that they just interviewed to be the next GM, and he's good at calling plays, you're going to have a chance to win a lot of games and just be competitive. So we won four games this year. Maybe we double that up and go eight, seven to nine-ish. And then in year two, bang, 10, 11, or 12. It might be a little slower than that when Gruden took over. He went four wins, seven wins, eight wins, 10 wins, I think, I believe. That's correct. So a lot of people, interesting, are saying in this poll that they think it's going to be a three-year plan. By the time year three rolls around, then we're going to be totally in the mix for, I won't say a Super Bowl, it's really hard to say that, but making the playoffs consistent, making a conscious effort to not drink into the microphone. I do think it makes sense for you to feel like the way the reboot could go if Ben Johnson is the next head coach. And again, this could all fall apart if we hire Pete Carroll. It's going to be completely different. I understand you saying it's going to be like the Lions because he just came from Detroit. Of course, I understand that. But I do think it's going to feel more like the 49ers just because... Oh, that's interesting. I just read it. Okay, we'll talk about that in a second. Because he's going to feel more like that Kyle Shanahan type. And they're going to build that with the John Lynch type GM to come in and right the ship in that way. Okay, so I'm going to read this tweet, keep commenting away. There's no way this is Graff. Is this Graff? Graff, is this you? Anyway, I'd be happy to just be competitive after three years. I mean, yeah, if in three years time, we were just in the mix to make the playoffs every now and again, like the Chargers feel like they're progressing to be and the Broncos feel like they're progressing to be, yeah, that would feel great. Just to be a organization. It's not Graff. Okay. You have the same name. I didn't think it was. Okay, just an interesting tidbit here. Because Scheffner came... Okay, Scheffner has just been all over the Raiders today for some reason. Get your comments in the chat here. Scheffner came out and said that we didn't try to trade up for Jaden Daniels. We didn't even call them at all. I had heard that we did. And that the commander is like, no, which made sense to me. Vic Taper just tweeted 22 minutes ago. Not true. We've reported all year that the Raiders tried and were told that Washington wasn't dealing. That was and is still accurate. Vic Taper saying that Scheffner doesn't know what he's talking about. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. So enough of the rebuild. Last thing I'll say here about this thing in particular, the rebuild. There was a report that came out and said that Deion Sanders is planning on making sure that there are a couple of teams that Shador does not get drafted by. He was interviewed somewhere. I don't quite remember who or where it was. It was a couple of days ago. Deion's been in the news a lot because of the Cowboys of it all. And he said, yeah, there's a couple of teams that I will not let Shador play for, a la Eli Manning in 2004. He was drafted by the Chargers. Rivers was drafted by the Giants. They made a trade because Eli said, I'm not going there. And what's interesting about that is that Eli is the son of a former player, Deion, the father of a current NFL prospect and Shador Sanders. We'll see what happens. Now, if you look at the draft order, every Raider fan knows this by heart, we got Titans, Giants, Browns or Browns, Giants, right? Picking the top. Then you have two teams under them, the Patriots and the Jags who are not taking quarterbacks. So if two of those teams that he will not let them play for, a lot of people think one of them is the Browns, makes a lot of sense to Sean Watson, weird situation. If the team is the Giants, hypothetically, I have no idea, just hypothetically, and the Titans go Cam Ward, then you have Shador saying outright, or Deion saying outright, we're not going to play for the Giants and the Browns. Do not take me. I don't love the optics of that, but if that is just the reality of the situation, then that is the reality of the situation. You have a world in which he doesn't go one because Cam Ward went, he doesn't go two or three because the Giants and the Browns can't draft them. The Patriots take Travis Hunter, the Jags take whoever, right? The defensive end from Michigan. All of a sudden, at six, Shador Sanders is just right there and Ben Johnson is like, yeah, we'll take Shador. High floor, super accurate, throws in anticipation. He can run the Detroit offense pocket passer, which by the way, Tom Brady wants a pocket passer. When he was calling the Eagles playoff game against the Packers and Jalen Hurts was doing these design runs, Tom Brady made a point of emphasis to say, you know, we're trying to protect the quarterback with all these rules and the quarterback is key and blah, blah, blah, and we're running these quarterbacks more than ever design runs. I'm not a big fan of that. Those were Tom Brady's words. Jared Goff with Ben Johnson, pocket passer. If that report is to be believed that he wanted to roll with Sam Howell, pocket passer. A little athletic, but pocket passer. I do think Ben Johnson probably wants Shador Sanders more than Cam Ward, pocket passer. Now, if Shador goes one, Cam Ward's not going to fall. She's going to go two or three, but if Cam Ward goes one and the other two teams that Deion did not want Shador to play for were the Giants and the Browns, there is a world in which Shador Sanders falls right into the waiting arms of Tom Brady, Ben Johnson and Mark Davis. After all that hysteria from Raiders fans, I can't believe we beat the Jags. We're going to lose Shador. I said, just wait and see what happens. Maybe there's a world in which Shador just falls to them anyway, because the Giants and the Browns don't even like him. And if that's the case, nobody voted for the commanders or the Texans, and I would not vote for that rebuild situation either, because you don't think in the moment we're going to be able to hit on the next great franchise quarterback. All of a sudden, the switch could be flipped because the defense is already good enough to win football games. Now you go get some offensive weapons and we're rocking and rolling. Speaking of offensive weaponry, I thought this would be fun to end this with, because I do think there's a world where one of these four players that I'm about to mention is on the Raiders next year, because we have a hundred million dollars in cap space per second behind the Patriots. The Patriots are going to be going for a lot of the same people we're going with offensive weaponry-wise. Now the four names to think about are Najee Harris, Chris Godwin, T. Higgins and Ashton Gente. Obviously three of those guys are in the league and one of them is going to be a draft pick. Now with the sixth pick in the draft, would it be crazy to draft a running back? I Six is high and he's a little guy, but he's had one of the better college football seasons that we've seen out of a running back in a long time. Now this running back class is stacked. I thought it was going to be a little more stacked with Craytron Allen and Nick Singleton from Penn State coming out. They both decided to run it back with Drew Aller, so none of these Penn State weapons besides Tyler Warren, who we're not going to draft, are not coming out. So here's my question to you. Would you rather have the combination of T. Higgins, who is probably the best wide receiver out there, and Ashton Gente, which means you would have to use the sixth pick on Gente, which is not a guarantee, or keep that sixth pick for somebody else and go Chris Godwin, who by the way is only 29 years old. Injury history, no doubt about it, but when he plays as a stud. And Najee Harris, because no doubt about it, we need to sign somebody or draft somebody to be a number one. Maybe McMillan is that. And by the way, comment other combinations if you don't like these two that I made right here. We do need to address that running back room as well. No better way to do that than to sign somebody like a Najee Harris, who's had his ups and downs in Pittsburgh, but that offense is not very good. And anytime you play the Steelers, you go, make that quarterback beat us because this running back is very good and we're not going to let him do anything. We're going to stack the box. Go ahead, Russ, beat us. Can't do that. Russell Wilson's watched. We got to find a way to fix the running back room and get a number one option. And I think right now these are the two most likely options. There's also, of course, a world where we get Najee and Tee Higgins, right? Which maybe would be the best case scenario. But I do think these are two very interesting choices here. I can't think of other running backs that are going to be free agents. Maybe an Aaron Jones that you can throw in the mix there. Maybe you go Judkins. I know people are enamored of Skadaboo because of that performance he had against Texas. This running back class is stacked. It's a lot better than it was last year. You had to have Bucky Irving come out of the woodworks. I see some people saying other. I would love to see those combinations in the comment section. And by the way, if you're watching this after the fact on YouTube, make sure we're commenting away. But as I wind this down here, just to recap real quickly, if you're a Chicago Bears fan and you're upset, you know, you need to clean house. Ryan Poles is still there conducting all of this. Nobody wants to work under him. That's why you've interviewed 100 million people. Just be happy with Mike McCarthy. Ben Johnson feels like he's coming to the Raiders. I know I want to say it's too good to be true, but I think that's the case. And if he is the next head coach, I do think, unless Shador falls to us, orchestrated by Dion, maybe Tom Brady and Mark Davis, but we're not going to talk about that. Wipe that from the record. There's a world in which we could flip the script and have a stronger, quicker, faster. I didn't mean to reference that song, but I did. Rebuild situation. So as I finish this poll, I think that's enough for me today. Are there any last minute tweets that we need to discuss or talk about? Because I didn't see that big taper thing until I went live. I do think that's going to be it for me here. Yeah, there's not much to talk about. The Thunder beat the Cavs by 38. Yikes. Basketball. Anyway, guys, thank you so much for watching. Whether you watch live here on Bleacher Report, whether you were watching after the fact on YouTube, hit that like button, comment away. Please be sure to subscribe. It is free. I have no charge to you. I love everybody watching. I will see you guys tomorrow. Same time. 7 p.m. Mountain, 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern. I'll see you next time.