Congratulations, Raiders fans. You got rid of your head coach.
Condolences, Raiders fans. You’re stuck with your owner.
As 49ers CEO Jed York once said during a period of pronounced dysfunction within his team, you can’t fire the owner. No, you can’t. Even if the owner needs to be fired.
Mark Davis needs to be fired. His track record as owner of the team, since inheriting it from his father in 2011, has been abysmal. Mark Davus has hired the wrong people at the wrong time. He has fired the right people at the wrong time. The team has been abysmal on his watch. If he had accountability to anyone, he would no longer have a job.
If, as we believe he does, Mark Davis loves the Raiders, he should get out of the way. He could cash out for perhaps $10 billion. If he hopes to still hold the pink slip and to be a glorified fan, he should hire a surrogate owner to do everything that a functional owner would and should do.
Davis, to be sure, isn’t the only owner who is unfit to properly own a multi-billion-dollar NFL franchise. But his firing of coach Josh McDaniels and G.M. Dave Ziegler puts him under the microscope. And the sample being magnified shows a virus. A plague. A person who is simply not fit to own and operate an NFL team.
But, again, there’s no mechanism for making a change. Raiders fans are stuck with him. Unless and until he gets out of the way.
He should get out of the way. He should either sell the team or find someone who can run it for him. It’s been 12 years. It’s not working.
Really, does anyone have any faith that Davis will make a good hire as the team’s next head coach? Does anyone have any faith that, if he were to hire a surrogate owner, he’d hire a good one?
The best outcome for Raiders fans would be for Davis to sell. And to then hope that the next owner, whose only requirement for getting the team will be to make the highest bid, will know how to properly own and operate an NFL franchise.
Meanwhile, Davis’s 31 business partners hope he doesn’t sell. Because they surely love competing with him.
