Every NFL offseason has a feeding frenzy, and this one had 10 head-coaching jobs on the menu. Nine teams grabbed their guys. The Las Vegas Raiders — a franchise not exactly famous for composure — just waited, which in most lines of work means settling for whoever nobody else wanted.
Not this time. The man they wanted, Klint Kubiak, was Seattle’s offensive coordinator, and league rules would not let him leave until Seattle’s season was done — which turned out to mean after it won the Super Bowl. General manager John Spytek’s summary, as Andrew Beaton reports in the Journal: “We had to be patient.” Now the Raiders are 3-0, one of five unbeaten teams, with one of the league’s best offenses and last season’s win total already matched.
The cost of going first
Here’s why this is more than luck. Since 2020 the league has made 52 head-coaching changes — about a quarter of the teams every year — and only three went to assistants off a newly crowned champion’s staff. The best candidates are often still working while everybody else is hiring, and most teams won’t wait. Last cycle, the season ended Jan. 4 and eight of the 10 openings were filled before February. The Raiders had already interviewed Kubiak; they knew what they wanted and waited for it, not around it. He liked what he saw, too: cap room, the No. 1 pick, Tom Brady in the ownership group, and two young tight ends, Brock Bowers and Michael Mayer, built for his playbook.
The patience compounds. Kirk Cousins, 38, who played for the Vikings when Kubiak coached there, signed as a placeholder and now leads the league with nine touchdown passes. That buys time for Fernando Mendoza, the No. 1 pick and last season’s national champion at Indiana, to learn from the sideline. Kubiak’s warning to the kid runs the other way, though: once you’re in the pocket, “The ball’s on fire.” Patience in the plan; speed in the execution.
Our read
This is a Behavioral piece about the cost of being first versus being right. Investors feel the same frenzy the Raiders ignored: the hot fund everybody’s piling into, the IPO you’re sure you’ll miss, the retirement date picked because a colleague picked it. Moving first feels like winning. Often it just means you’ve taken whatever was available that week. And the Raiders’ wait wasn’t passive — the homework was done before the clock started.
That’s the line worth keeping. Patience with a plan is a strategy; patience without one is drift. Write down what you’re waiting for — the rate, the price, the person — and what you’ll do when it shows up. Then do what Kubiak tells his rookie: when the moment comes, don’t hold the ball. A short review in the offseason beats a scramble in January.