Raiders Go All In On Ben Johnson After Firing Tom Telesco (Detailed Breakdown)

Holy moly, boys and girls, Raider Nation, friends and family, enemies maybe if you're watching. My name is Rodney. Welcome back to another Bleach Report live stream. This is the first live stream for your boy in prime time. And what do I mean by that? 9 p.m. Eastern, I'm looking out my window and it's dark. And yet here I am live on Bleach Report. And we got so much, my chair's too low, so much to discuss, to talk about. If you're watching live on VR, make sure we're firing away in the comments because I know, I know without a shadow of a doubt that we've got people in the chat that have hot takes about what transpired today. And I also know that if you're watching this, not live, post live on Bleacher, no, on my YouTube channel, Oliver Raiders. And if you don't know about that, make sure you head on over there and subscribe. Comment away because we got so much to talk about. Tom Telesco, two days, a day and a half after the Raiders, Tom Brady, let go of Antonio Pierce. Tom Telesco is fired, he's let go, sayonara. I'll tell you what, that is not something I had on the off-season bingo card, but it's happened. So as we wait for a few people here to get into the stream, I wanna make sure that everything's rocking and rolling here because I went live a couple minutes earlier. Let me just make sure that everything's working here on my end, I do believe it is, because last time we had a bit of a scare with the live going out. I don't know what happened, but I just wanna make sure everything's going good. Can I see myself, am I talking? Yep, we're going. All right, so Tom Telesco is fired. Didn't see that coming, I have a lot of takes on it. The first thing I wanna say specifically about Tom Telesco and the job that he did this season, and ultimately why I guess it didn't matter. All the good that he did, all the capital, all the equity that he acquired with Raider Nation, because I would say when he was hired, people were like, ah, I don't know, kind of stale bread, that was kind of the vibe there. 14-year Charger General Manager gets fired the game after we put 63 up against the Chargers, and now the last game he's ever GM'd for the Las Vegas Raiders, it was a loss to the Chargers. A little bit of dramatic irony there. Tom Telesco did a lot of good things for us. He was able to maneuver out of the Devante Adams contract. He was able to get a third round pick for a player that was at this point past his prime, and he was able to locate Brock Bowers. Now, Brock Bowers is an obvious selection. Like if you need a playmaker on offense, and Brock Bowers is there, you draft Brock Bowers. It's pretty simple, right? All that to say, he also located JPJ, who's gonna be our center, and he's also going to, yes, yes I did, he's also found DJ Glaze, right? So, he did some good things, but at the end of the day, Tom Brady and Mark Davis, and these are the reports that are coming out, Sheffner and Rappaport and Palmer and Pelisero all said the same thing. They are in lockstep with this. The front office, I guess which is just Tom Brady at this point, wanted the new coach and the new GM to be in lockstep. They wanted to have the head coach be someone who is locating the GM with Tom Brady, right? And Tom Telesco didn't fit that bill. He's part of the past regime. And I've seen people saying, what about Champ Kelly replacing Tom Telesco? What about this? Everybody that's on this staff needs to go. If we're gonna do this, right? If we're gonna restart, reboot, revamp this whole thing, everybody needs to go. And I'm talking down to the studs. Rip the whole thing out if this is what you're gonna do. And at the end of the day, as well as he did in the draft, I think the fatal flaw for Tom Telesco was Gardner Mitchell. When Sam Darnold was out there, now look, I'm not gonna do revisionist history. Nobody thought Sam Darnold was gonna be as good as he's been playing. No one thought 14 win Minnesota Vikings led by Sam Darnold. However, if you have Gardner Mitchell and Sam Darnold and you just look at them with your eyeballs, one of them was like a sixth round draft pick who's smaller than I am, and one of them was USC, top 10 pick, strong arm, learned under Kyle Shanahan, and Tom Telesco decided to give Gardner Mitchell more money per year and more money total than Sam Darnold. Gardner Mitchell got a longer contract than Sam Darnold. Sam Darnold, unless he's tagged, is going to be a free agent. Gardner Mitchell technically is still under contract. So when you look back at what went wrong this season for Tom Telesco, didn't matter that you signed Christian Wilkins, didn't matter that you found all these good draft picks. The whole season was a wash when we went in with these two quarterbacks. Doesn't matter if you tried to trade up for Jayden Daniels, you didn't. It takes two to tango, I understand that, but it is what it is, right? So here's what I wanna start this out with, okay? Because then we'll get into the coaching and everything. I'm gonna pin a poll here. I want everyone commenting away. I see the comments about Drew Rowler. I'm not saying a word about it. What are your thoughts on the firing of Tom Telesco? Was it justified? Meaning, yes, he shouldn't be RGM, he wasn't good at it, he was never good at it. Is it a bad move to get rid of him because of all the draft picks that he was able to acquire? Or are you willing to do whatever it takes to get the next great head coach? Because that's now the key to this all, right? Because the reports out there are that there were coaches who looked at the Raiders' job and were like, don't really feel like working with Tom Telesco. And if you break down the other spots, right, that have franchise quarterbacks-ish, we think, right? You've got the Patriots with Drake May. Elliott Wolfe, the GM, president, whatever, is still there. Hasn't had the best track record with drafting people, but he drafted Drake May. Now, Drake May fell to them, but whatever, it is what it is. You've got the Chicago Bears with Ryan Poles, who isn't their GM, but he's like their president, and he's like a finance guy, but if you're the coach or the GM, you have to answer to this weird guy. Ben Johnson doesn't want to go to the Bears because he wants Ryan Poles gone. And you have, so you have the Patriots, you have the Bears, and who's the other team that I'm forgetting now that also has a franchise quarterback? Oh, the Jags with Trevor Lawrence. Now, maybe Trevor Lawrence has fallen back to earth a little bit, but the other thing to consider is that Trent Baalke is still there, and nobody thinks he should still have a job. Nobody wants to work with that guy because, and I've seen a bunch of people say this, this isn't one of my anecdotes, but I've seen a bunch of people say, when you're Doug Peterson and you're on the sidelines and your team's losing, who's up in the booth with the owner, Shaktan? Trent Baalke, whispering in his ear, Doug Peterson's gotta go, we gotta find the next head coach. Trent Baalke has been there for four head coaches, it seems like, which is why I agree with the poll that says we gotta do anything to get a better head coach. Now that Telesco's gone, if you want to say this Raiders job was like a five out of 10 in terms of appeal, it's at least a seven and a half now. We have definitely jumped, if we weren't higher than them already, the Jets and the Saints, right? Those other three teams I listed, the Bears, the Jags and the Patriots have their franchise guy, we think, but you've gotta answer to a GM there. That's the first key to this all. And I do think there are head coaching options out there, big fish, the 300 pound Marlin, I just watched the social network yesterday, so it's in my head, that we are going to go after, that we are already maybe planning to interview, that do not want to answer to a general manager that they do not have a relationship with. And I think that was very important, and that was the ultimate reason why Tom Telesco was fired. And maybe it's not fair, but life isn't fair. That's business, baby. It's a wins and losses league. And we just won 40 games. So let's read some of the comments. Trevor Cluster says, we get Johnson a variable equals a good move, we don't get either bad move. I don't necessarily disagree with that. We'll talk about some head coaching options in a second here, and then we'll get into the Tom Brady of it all, because that guy is ruthless. Douglas Duncan, most head coaches want their own GM, the Raiders find Telesco puts them at the top of the list. I don't know if it puts them at the top of the list, but it puts them in the discussion for sure, because we don't have that quarterback in place. Now, we might be able to maneuver a way to get one of these guys. If Allard comes out, which by the way, on the broadcast of the Penn State game that's going on right now, the broadcast team asked Drew Allard, you know, are you coming out? What are you doing? And he's like, right now, I'm just focused on winning a national championship. After that, we'll see what happens. So he's gone from I'm coming back to I'm not sure. I know he's having a bad game right now, but Josh Allen can probably do 50% of his passes at Wyoming. I think let's all just take a collective deep breath. Trevor says, here's the thing. If we do this and the appeal isn't enough, then it looks like a very bad move. And I don't disagree with you. However, I do believe in Tom Brady, which brings me to the Tom Brady of it all. Now, before I put this poll out there, in my humble opinion, Tom Brady, I'm not saying he should, I'm not saying he shouldn't. I'm just saying this as like what I think is going on behind closed doors. Tom Brady is running this organization. Now, we've had examples, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, of people trying to do this and it not working. The difference is Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan feel like people who were great Hall of Fame basketball players who were like, well, I can dip my foot in being an executive and we'll see what happens. And then they're like, oh, I'm not good at this. Tom Brady feels like a different breed. He feels like, oh, I won six Super Bowls with the Patriots. Oh, you think I'm assistant quarterback? I'm gonna go to Tampa Bay and win a Super Bowl there. Oh, is that not good enough for you guys? I'm gonna go call games for $40 million and take one of the franchises who've lost the most games in the last 20 years in the Las Vegas Raiders and we're gonna flip this thing on its head. Rob Gronkowski said on Up and Atoms, our favorite show that Devante's always on, Tom Brady is the greatest evaluator of talent that he's ever seen. Now, that doesn't mean he's a great evaluator of who the next head coach is. And there was rumors that he called Bill Belichick to see what his interest was in coaching this team. Now the reports are he called Bill Belichick to pick his brain to see who we should hire as the next head coach. Tom Brady is running the show because Mark Davis has proven as much as he wants to get things correct, he's not doing a good job of it. He tried like the up-and-coming young hotshot coordinator with Dennis Allen, that didn't work. He went with the proven guy in Jack Del Rio, fired him for John Gruden, which was the big swing, that didn't work. He went with the hot offensive mind, Josh McDaniels, because you didn't go Basagian, now you're gonna go AP. It's all a nightmare. And he was like, okay, you know what? The people around me aren't working. I'm not working. Hey, greatest quarterback of all time, greatest football player to ever touch God's green earth. Will you help me? And Tom Brady's running the show there. So I ask you this. Am I right in this? Here's the poll. Is Tom Brady secretly the president of football operations? And there's a bunch of options here. It's yes, and you think he should. Yes, and you think he shouldn't. No, but he should be. No, and he shouldn't be. And I've seen nothing but votes for yes, and I love it. And that's so interesting to me, because when he started to become part owner of this team, people were like, but the Tuck rule. He's a patriot, he can't. Are we done with this now? Have we grown up? Have we understood that Tom Brady needs to be in this organization to right the wrongs of what Mark Davis has been doing for the last 20 or 15 years since he took over for his father? And it wasn't that good when Al Davis was alive toward the end of his run, by the way. I believe he probably can't have this title because he's calling games for Fox, and maybe he quits and says, screw it, I'm gonna become the John Elway of this team. I want a yes, and I'm anxious. I don't disagree with that. I think Tom Brady, without a doubt, is the acting president of football operations for the Las Vegas Raiders, which is something I never thought I'd say. You've got Bill Belichick, post-New England, coaching college football in North Carolina Tar Heel Blue, and you've got Tom Brady as basically the president of football operations for the Las Vegas Raiders. And I just want to bring something up that Diana Rossini said, who's an insider, who works for The Athletic now. She used to be on ESPN. She said the single biggest thing that Tom Brady was able to do so far was make sure that the Raiders had a chance to interview Ben Johnson, because Ben Johnson made it abundantly clear he's very picky with what he's going to do. He's got the best job in sports. He's coaching under Dan Campbell, making a ton of money, running the best offense that we've seen in the last, I don't know, five, 10 years. Maybe that one Kansas City Chiefs team with Mahomes MVP season, the first one, and the 2013 Denver Broncos come to mind. This offense is electric, and he's got no reason to leave unless he has what he wants in place. So Tom Brady works his magic, makes a phone call or two. This is similarly to Magic Johnson stealing Cliff Kingsbury from us, right? It's the same idea. All of a sudden, Ben Johnson has a virtual interview tomorrow to become the next head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. Now he's not gonna, we're not gonna hire him tomorrow. We can't even in-person interview him until the Lions lose, so this might be a long haul for us. I don't know how all that works. But the only reason we have an interview with Ben Johnson is because Telesco is gone and because Tom Brady's in the building. And of all the coordinators and coaches and Hall of Fame level talent out there, Ben Johnson is the number one commodity that every single head coach opening wants. And the reason that we are able to interview him is because of Brady. And now with Telesco, I don't even wanna say this out loud because I don't wanna be upset or hurt. People in my Discord know that I've been saying for weeks now we're not getting Ben Johnson, we're not getting Ben Johnson because I'm preparing myself. You know, expect disappointment, you won't be disappointed. There's a chance now with Telesco being gone that Ben Johnson has us ranked over everybody else. Because as good as all these quarterbacks are, he doesn't wanna answer to Elliott Wolfe or Trent Baalke or Ryan Poles. That's not what he wants. So if you're Tom Brady and you're Mark Davis and you're interviewing him, just know in the back of your mind, Ben Johnson's also interviewing you. So I'm gonna unpin this poll, everyone's in lockstep agreement, I love that. And we're gonna do one more poll here because we need to talk about the coaching options out there. And I want you, and let me read some of these comments first. Okay, Trevor says that the function is crazy, AP takes the stand today before firing, everyone says Telesco has another year and the next day he is gone. Looks so bad to future head coaches or GMs. And you know how you right those wrongs? You offer them a six year deal. Six years blank check. This is Tom Brady now. Tom Brady didn't bring in any of these guys before. Tom Brady's going to bring a level of stability to a dysfunctional organization. So I don't disagree with you that it's a bad look, but at the end of the day, it just needs to be done. Clean slate, the McDaniels, AP, Telesco thing is done and now we're moving on. Now we're moving on. Let's see, let's see, let's see, let's see, let's see. What do we got here? What do we got here in the chat? Do you think it was intentional to wait an extra day to fire Telesco so there would be two separate headlines bringing more light to it? I don't know. I don't know about that one. I think that they wanted to make sure that Ben Johnson was a real possibility and that if he wasn't, they might have held onto Telesco. And the second that Brady found out, hey, this could happen, they axed him. It makes me think that there's a plan in place here. Just saying. Coaches around the league have said the Raiders facilities are the best, our roster isn't horrible, and we're in prime position to make moves around the coaches' wants. No doubt about it. We've got a lot of cap space, thanks to Tom Telesco. And we've got some good young players. We just don't have that quarterback. Okay, so I'm going to put this out here. Let's talk about the potential coaching candidates because we've talked about this until we're blue in the face. These are the three, to me, that feel most likely, and I know you're going to be like, Bruce Arians, what the? I do think there are head coaching candidates that we're not talking about, that's been reported on by Josina Anderson. There's two in particular that nobody's thinking about that we're looking at. And I think, at the very least, Tom Brady, similarly to how he made a call with Belichick, he called Bruce Arians, gauged his interest, and maybe if Bruce said no, he was like, all right, well, then what should I do? You want to come be the GM? Pete Carroll is interesting. Pete Carroll might be my second choice just because he is very stable. You know you're going to compete in and out with him. He's a loose personality. He's not like this rah-rah guy. He has a lot of fun. I know he's up there in age, but I do think, in this division, you either have to get Ben Johnson, which is presumably, you don't know for sure, but presumably the next version of Kyle Shanahan or Sean McVay, or you've got to come in with somebody on the same level as Sean Payton, Andy Reid, Jim Harbaugh, and I think Pete Carroll and Bruce Arians are on that level. Ben Johnson, and comment other if you think there's somebody else, Ben Johnson, he has to be the guy, and I think they're going all in for him. I think there's a world in which they bring him in and even say something like, look, we understand we don't have a quarterback yet in place. We might be in position to get one. We'll see what happens with the combine and the draft. We'll see who comes out. What are your thoughts on, Shador, Kim Moore, Jalen Milroy, Drew Aller? I think they should tell Ben Johnson, we're going to assign you to a long-term deal. We do not want constant turnover. We're going to bring this GM or this GM, and who do you prefer? Okay, you like this guy? All right, we're going to bring him in, and that you basically have immunity until we bring in a young quarterback. If we have to, for whatever reason, run it back with Aiden O'Connell, bring in Kirk Cousins, Ryan Tannehill, trade for a veteran, we're not going to really evaluate how well you are doing until we bring in that young guy. And it's not Ben Johnson's fault that we're not in position to draft one of these quarterbacks. So I think that should be a major talking point with him, because we've got to sell ourselves to him just as much as he's selling himself to us. So Ben Johnson is my number one option, with Pete Carroll and Bruce Arians right underneath. I wouldn't mind Mike Vrabel, but I've kind of taken him out of there because we're not even requesting to interview him. Doc81 says, does Champ Kelly have a chance at the GM job? No, you got to get rid of everybody. The only person that might survive is Deuce Gruden, because Deuce Gruden's been there since he was like 10 years old, and he's just always there. He's the Tremblake of fitness coordinators, whatever they are, personal trainers, strength and conditioning coaches, I guess. Fitness coordinator, I said. If Ben Johnson has an in-person interview with the Las Vegas Raiders, don't let him leave the building. Raider Nation, you need to surround it, keep him in there until he signs on the dotted line. Remember when Charles Woodson was coming back, and we were like, don't let him leave the building, and we swarmed him, we gotta do the same thing, have to. This could change the trajectory of our organization, because you know the defense is gonna be good. Ben Johnson will have sway to bring in a defensive coordinator like a Robert Sala, right? And we have a lot of good defensive players, so the floor of our defense is like 15. The height could be best in the league, depending on if we retain some guys and we draft a couple other pieces. We don't know yet if Ben Johnson can be a great head coach, but we know without a shadow of a doubt, he will be an awesome offensive coordinator, and he will get the offense rocking and rolling. He could've went to Seattle last year, he could've went to the Commanders last year, he pulled himself out of that discussion for a better job this season, and now with Brady in the mix, and Telesco gone, I think you gotta swing for the fences. If Telesco goes and we don't get Ben Johnson, and it's Pete Carroll and Bruce Aarons, I'll be okay with that. I've seen some talk in the chat here, Chadwick says, realistic choices are Todd Munkin, Liam Cohen, and Aaron Glenn. We're interviewing Munkin and Glenn, I believe. We have not yet requested to interview Cohen, which is interesting. I saw somebody say, forgive me if I can't find it. Okay, here, Donut said, I like Bruce Aarons as GM with Cohen as a coach. I don't hate that. Liam Cohen is cool, too. I would lean offensive mind, even if we can't get Ben Johnson, and Pete Carroll and Bruce Aarons are that, and so is Munkin and Liam Cohen. All that to say, Ben Johnson's gotta be the guy. You gotta do whatever you can to get him, whatever it takes to get Ben Johnson, and I think most of Raider Nation is in lockstep, and I think Tom Brady and Mark Davis are in lockstep, too. All that to say, Raider Nation, lock in. Buckle in, because it's going to be a long few weeks here, because we're gonna see reports of Ben Johnson interviewed with so-and-so, and that went really well, and it was as good as the Raiders, but was it better than the Saints? There's gonna be interviews that we have to do for Brian Flores, and we're gonna interview Robert Sala, and I think they're interviewing Sala, by the way, to gauge whether or not he wants to be the DC if he doesn't get the head coaching job, because say what you want about how the Jets were. Sala's defense in New York was awesome, but yeah, let's get some stuff in the chat here before I hop off here. I got a couple more minutes if you guys wanna talk about anything. I wouldn't be surprised if we brought Grunen back, though, just saying there's no way that's happening. I promise you Bill Belichick's not coming, John Gruden is not coming, Deion Sanders is not coming. They are not doing that. Deion, it says there's like a 15% chance. Gruden and Belichick is 0%. If John Gruden gets a head coaching job someplace else, does Deuce stay with the Raiders? That's a good question. Probably not. Extremely biased, but I also think the Raiders have an advantage because of the great facilities and income tax and all that, but it's really cool. It's just a really cool historic team, too. I think it's more appealing to be a Raiders head coach than the Jaguars or the Titans. The mystique of the Raiders, we have to give the back up. Yeah, we'll talk about Zach Wilson. That's actually a good point. The mystique of the Raiders is important, more important than living in Florida or Tennessee for some candidates. I don't know if Ben Johnson is that type, but if there's a little bit of ego involved, confidence, not ego, you wanna be the guy that turned the Raiders back into the Raiders of the 80s and the 90s, right, and the 70s. You wanna be that person, and a lot of people have said, oh, this is a bad job to want because you've got Reed and Mahomes and Herbert and Harbaugh and Bo Nix and Sean Payton, but there's going to be somebody, and maybe it is Ben Johnson because maybe he's feeding off the energy that Dan Campbell provides, that thinks, you know what, forget that. I'm gonna be the person to take on all of them and climb to the top of the mountain. That's the type of mentality that Tom Brady has. Tom Brady isn't scared of these guys. He needs to find someone that has that same killer instinct, right? So I think that is a good point. Don't assume it's a single thing for Pence. It is awesome. We should draft him. Okay, Tron Allen, Nick Singleton. I think Nick Singleton's better. Let's go get him. It's Liam Cohen and John. Spy ticket package deal. Potentially, potentially. That's another thing we gotta figure out is the coordinator situation, but look, I've been going for 28 minutes here. I think that's gonna be it for me. I'm gonna unpin this poll and close it. Oh, Zach Wilson, Milton. No, that's a one-hit wonder. Zach Wilson, real fast. It would just be funny to give him a chance because he's had a similar trajectory to Sam Darnold. High pick for the Jets, showed flashes, but ultimately didn't work out. The Jets are a terrible organization. He might be a bad quarterback, but the Jets think as an organization. That's clear with Geno and Sam Darnold. Sam Darnold went to the 49ers, learned under one of the great offensive minds of Kyle Shanahan, right? Zach Wilson went to the Broncos, under one of the great offensive minds in Sean Payton. So there's a world in which you throw a flyer on Zach Wilson and maybe he turns out to be the next Geno or the next Sam Darnold. Who knows? Just throwing it out there. All that to say, if you're watching on Bleach Report, thank you so much for joining. I'm gonna get back to this Penn State game. If you're watching live, nope, if you're watching post-live on YouTube, drop likes, drop comments, hit that subscribe button. I'll be back here tomorrow, same time to discuss some more Raiders news updates, daily Raider takes, 9 p.m. Eastern, Friday, Thursday and Friday, all the way to the new league year. Thank you so much for watching. I love you guys and I'll see you next time.