Press conferences in the NFL or in any sport can be a little tedious at times. Some of us are football junkies and inhale anything from, say, Mike McDaniel. That becomes appointment viewing on the ol’ YouTube feed.
But one great thing about these pressers, regardless of how may be at the podium, is it can lend to a lot of loaded subtext. When you get a juicy situation like the Las Vegas Raiders — who just fired their head coach Josh McDaniels and proceeded to celebrate their subsequent win with victory cigars — it’s a ripe opportunity to say the least.
Enter: All-Pro wide receiver Davante Adams. Following what turned out to be McDaniels’ final game as coach, Adams purposely stopped himself short of saying anything to the media. Now? I have to think this was a little cathartic for him:
Does Davante come out and flat-out say, “we had cigars because we were so thrilled not to be in Josh McDaniels’ proximity”? No. But in so many words, that’s precisely what he said.
What other type of “adversity” could he be referring to that outsiders could never understand? To reiterate one of the many talking points I’ve had about McDaniels getting pink-slipped: The stuff about his tenure that has leaked and been reported on? That’s far from everything that was actually going on behind the scenes.
Just ponder for a second how bad it had to be in Las Vegas for players to literally meet with owner Mark Davis and, in essence, tell him to flat-out fire McDaniels’ a**. Then for players to tear McDaniels a new one in a meeting before interim coach Antonio Pierce got up to try to fire everyone up, only for McDaniels to take offense to it.
Because Pierce brought up the 2007 Giants, who beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl…
Some coaches are hopelessly in over their heads in all facets, like the Bears’ Matt Eberflus. There’s no question Josh McDaniels can scheme up offensive football. Whatever else is required of a head coach, though, he ain’t got any of it. Laughably incompetent.
So yeah, bottom line is, Davante is trying to be as classy as possible in underscoring how awful of a coach McDaniels was to play for. He said what everyone assumed to be true. You don’t smoke cigars to celebrate improving your record to 4-5 unless some serious sh*t went down. And said sh*t for the 2023 Las Vegas Raiders all traces back to one man: Josh McDaniels.
