Raiders Shockingly Fire Tom Telesco And Blow A Hole In Coaching Search

Wow, didn't see that coming, I'll be completely honest with you, of all the things I thought that would have happened this offseason, firing coaches, training up, signing free agents, interviewing people that we didn't think we'd be interviewing, Tom Telesco being fired is not one of those things. I have a lot of thoughts going through my head right now. I'm going to do my best to siphon through all of them, to have a cohesive take on this situation because my brain is pinballing back and forth. I really did not expect this to happen. Thank God I didn't make a video last night because my video would have been how Telesco and Brady are going to be conducting this coaching search, which is going to be the most normal coaching search that we've had since Jack Del Rio, maybe. That's all out the window now. I don't think this was the plan from the beginning, but Tom Brady, I'm going to get to all my takes in a second. I've got to tell you a few things real quickly. Hit that subscribe button if you're new, hit that like button, that helps a lot. Comment away your thoughts because this is insane. Tell me what you think this means. And also, 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific, I will be live on Bleach Report tonight, so download the app so you can watch me live. If you don't catch me live, the live stream will be uploaded the following day here on YouTube. We're going to be talking about, I thought it was going to be the coaching, but this is going to be the main topic. It's going to be about 30 minutes. We're going to get our comments in there, live stream, Bleach Report. Go check it out. Here's my initial take right off the bat. Tom Brady is the president of football operations. Whether or not he has the official title, my phone is exploding. Whether he has the official title or not, he is the John Elway of this football team in terms of what John Elway is doing with the Denver Broncos, what he did before, whatever. He is making all the calls. He's not a loser. Doesn't matter how well we drafted, right? He looked at what Tom Telesco did with this team. He asked him what his future plans were, and he said, that's not good enough, bro. That's take number one. Take number two. I do believe, for better or for worse, this is now a better destination for a potential head coach to come in here because it's now GM and head coach on the same level. Take the Jacksonville Jaguars, for example. Trent Baalke is still there. Nobody likes him because he keeps surviving all these coaching changes. When the Jacksonville Jaguars are playing as terribly as they are, Trent Baalke is up in the owner's suite going, can you believe how bad this coach is? Can you believe how bad Doug Peterson is? Doug Peterson gets fired. Trent Baalke stays. The next head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders doesn't want to have to deal with that. They want to be in lockstep with their GM. Now, who's going to be the GM? I have no earthly idea. The only person that I can think of is Ed Dodds, who was getting interviewed last year, and he was in the circle of the Raiders front office, and Mark Davis really likes him, and I've heard that he's a Raider fan through and through. I don't know about that. We'll talk about that in another video, I guess. This is wild. Tom Telesco had a very good draft. I thought pretty good free agency, but the Gardner Minshew of it all maybe really came back to bite him, especially when there's a chance that we could have had Sam Darnold instead of Minshew, and they gave Minshew more money. Less annually, but more money total, and I think that did not sit well with Brady, and I think that Brady did not love the idea that maybe he didn't want to trade up this year for a Shador Sanders or a Cam Ward. I don't know. This is all speculation. This all happened right now. My Discord exploded. Make sure you're joining the Discord, because that's where I really found out my Raider news more than anything else. Join the Discord. Link is in the description below. I need to read some of these tweets here, because again, my phone is blowing up. Mark Davis and Tom Brady are frantically cleaning house for their date with Ben Johnson is the first tweet that I see. That's really what I want to talk about here. Here's another tweet. This makes the Raiders a more attractive landing spot for their coaches that want more control on this ability to pick their GM. Raiders, okay, this just came up. This just came up. The Las Vegas Raiders are firing GM Tom Telesco. After all, the Las Vegas Raiders announced Thursday while expressed their appreciation for helping build the future of the foundation, blah, blah, blah. Okay. While this appears to be a change in direction for Raiders' ownership, it does create a timeline where a new head coach and general manager will be brought in together during the same offseason. With that as a backdrop, Diana Rossini of The Athletic reported Telesco is fired mostly because ownership teams prefer having the general manager and head coach more connected, like a cohesive partnership, rather than something that feels arranged in force. I mean, that does make sense to me. She also noted the minority owner Tom Brady has lots of influence in Las Vegas. And then Vic Taffer of The Athletic provided more context to the situation. Telesco appeared safe Tuesday when the Raiders fired Antonio Pierce, a decision the general manager was not involved in. So Tom Telesco did not fire AP. But the more Mark Davis and Tom Brady talked, the league sources said they decided it was time to hire a new GM as well. This is wild. Whereas I want to read this other Diana Rossini tweet here because, look, I don't want to believe this. I don't. Here's a good, here's a good tweet from Ed Crax. I don't know who this is. Makes sense that the Raiders' GM gets canned. Wasn't it him who left the team without a starting cover for QB? Mintro and O'Connor are backups at best and drafted a luxury pick for tight end. Didn't have to squint to see a 4-13 season on the horizon. Okay. I want to find this other Diana Rossini tweet. I don't know where it is. Okay, here we go. This was 18 minutes ago, so this was right when Telesco got fired. She said, I still think the biggest win for the Raiders, or sorry, I still think the biggest win the Raiders have going for them right now is that Ben Johnson agreed to interview with them. That is all thanks to Tom Brady. Yeah. Look, I don't want to believe this. Some of the Raiders are, this is Josian Anderson now, some of the Raiders are targeting is likely asking for or is going to need a fresh slate. This is likely what's best in Tom Brady's mind too. I don't want to believe this because I just don't want to get hurt again. I don't want to get my hopes up and then we settle for, you know, a Pete Carroll, which is okay. That could work, right? Ben Johnson has made it explicitly clear and he did so last year as well. I will not interview with teams who I do not think there's a chance I can coach for. Now, if you just look at the openings, the Jets, we have a better, we're more attractive than the Jets. The Saints were more attractive than the Saints. Okay. Whatever. The Bears, the Jags, and the Patriots, you can make an argument, all have their franchise quarterback set in stone. Now the Patriots, Elliot Wolf is their president. He's their GM. He's not going anywhere. That's, they've made that abundantly clear. He's staying. And it also feels like Mike Variable is going to be the next head coach of the Patriots. Let's just pretend Mike Variable goes to the Patriots. Ryan Poles is like the GM president of football for the Bears. Nobody likes him. The Bears ownership is really bad. That could get weird with the front office. They're not firing poles. And I already talked about Trent Baalke with Jacksonville. The Raiders now, front office wise, are the most attractive team out there. And Ben Johnson, like I said, said he's not going to waste time interviewing with teams. He doesn't see a path forward coaching. James Palmer has come out and said the Raiders are focused on looking for an offensive-minded head coach, although they're going to interview everybody. They're going to interview Salah. They're going to interview Flores probably. Is this a move to open up a path to have Ben Johnson be the next head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders? He was technically my number two. It was Variable one, Ben Johnson two. I've come out and admitted that a part of me feels like I'm putting him at two because I just don't want to get my hopes up. Is there a path now where the attractiveness level of the Las Vegas Raiders opportunity to be the next head coach of this storied franchise just got way higher? People are saying it in the league. This now makes the job more desirable. And Ben Johnson has the virtual interview tomorrow. They're also interviewing Tom Munkin, Aaron Glenn, Robert Salah, somebody else I'm forgetting. That might be it. I think there's five. I'm forgetting another one. I'll talk about this more on my Bleach Report. I think Bruce Arians is a sneaky option there. Maybe he comes over and becomes the GM now. This is wild. From the Tom Telesco perspective, I thought he had a good draft. People in the Discord are trying to talk to me. Someone just said, where's the video? I'm recording as we speak, brother. Let me just say this. Get in the Discord. This place is a mob scene right now. I'm recording as we speak. He had a good draft. Although just taking the best player available isn't the hardest thing in the world. It is hard for us to do. It was our best draft in a long time, which is why I'm a little torn about this. But if you tell me, if you told me, hey, you can have Ben Johnson, you got to fire AP and Tom Telesco, I'd say do it now, right now. I just wouldn't have done that because I didn't think there would be a chance that this could happen. But now with Tom Brady essentially being the president of football operations, I don't know how you can argue that now. I think Kevin Garnett level here, anything is possible. Anything is possible. This is crazy. I did not expect this to happen. I did not expect this to happen. I just want to read any more last minute tweets here. The Ben Johnson thing is alive and well, dude. And again, I'm not, I don't want to put a smile on my face. I don't want to get my hopes up. This has been such a bad season. It's been such a bad run. 20 years of being excited and then coming back down to earth. And there's no guarantee that Ben Johnson is even good. But he's clearly far and away the most sought after head coaching candidate in this cycle. And he was in last cycle. And he continuously dominates with the Lions. And if anything, our offense will be much better than it was last year. And him coming in with his pick of GM, there's going to be a way that they think they can get a franchise quarterback, whether that's trading up, trading for JJ McCarthy, luring Sam Darnold, if they let him go. The possibilities are endless now. This maybe opens the door for Pete Carroll, a Bruce Arians, like one of these guys that wants to have more control. I don't have any candidates in mind. It's just Dodds. Dodds. They're not going to promote champ Kelly. That's not happening. So I think that's it for me. I'm going to talk about this in length on Bleach Report, which is probably why I'm not live streaming right now. I'm going to live stream in a couple hours. That's six. Penn State plays today. Pray to whatever God you believe in that Drew Eller wins this game and that his stock only rises, but not rises enough to get drafted first overall, even although that would help us too. That means because we need him to come out. And everyone's like, that's a telescope pick. That's a telescope pick. He ain't picking the guys anymore. So we'll see what the new GM prospect is going to be. Dodds, that's the only one I can think of. Join the Discord. Join the Patreon, man. Videos are going to be uploaded fast and furious. This season for the Raiders has just begun. And on Patreon, with a Patreon membership, which is only $5, you get videos like this hours, days in advance. You get to become executive producer. You get your name at the end of the credits. You get ad-free content. You get exclusive content never before seen on YouTube. Join. Link is in the description below or go to Patreon.com slash Allboard Raiders. We have 26 members. Let's get to 30. Hit that subscribe button. It is free. I have no charge to you. I love you guys. And I will see you probably in an hour here when we do something else crazy.