Raiders promoting from within for Offensive Coordinator, QB coach

Not often do you see a team with a 12-4 record based almost solely on the strength of their top five offense not bring back their offensive coordinator. That’s just what the Raiders have done, letting Bill Musgrave go with his contract up after two seasons.

To fill his spot, they have promoted Quarterbacks Coach Todd Downing, who was seen as a potential hot commodity as an Offensive Coordinator candidate for his work with Derek Carr the past two seasons as well as previous stints in Buffalo and Detroit.

During Downing’s 3 years in Detroit, Matt Stafford became one of the NFL’s best passers, averaging over 5000 yards in his first two seasons under Downing and having what are still his three best seasons statistically.

Last season in Oakland was a strange one from an offensive perspective. It was strange to find plenty of criticisms with the play calling when it was the offense that was coming to the rescue and bailing out the defense.

Sometimes it’s a bit more obvious than others just where the blame lies for a particular call or game plan. But without being on the inside, it’s impossible to fully understand who is at fault on every given play. To say otherwise would disingenuous. The fault could lie in the play call, the quarterback for changing the play called or not changing it based on what he sees, or on how the play was executed.

Based on the Raiders’ coaching decisions, you get an idea of where they feel the credit/blame belongs.

Derek Carr was on an MVP Pace much of this season. The Raiders saw Musgrave as more of a hinderance than a benefit, so they let him leave and promoted Downing who had coached Carr personally to reach his potential.

With Downing’s promotion, someone would have to take his previous position of quarterbacks coach. For that the Raiders have simply promoted Downing’s assistant Jake Peetz, removing the ‘Assistant’ from his title. He will serve as the Raiders new QB coach according to MMQB’s Albert Breer.

Peetz was on the Rams radar as they are looking to fill out new head coach Sean McVay’s staff. They were expected to be interested in Peetz as either a QB coach or wide receiver’s coach.

Peetz and McVay were both part of the staff in Washington when McVay was tight ends coach and offensive coordinator and Peetz was offensive quality control/assistant wide receivers coach. Peetz joined Del Rio’s staff when he took over with the Raiders prior to the 2015 season.

Peetz has moved up rather quickly. As of 2013, he was in the college ranks as an offensive analyst at Alabama assisting the quarterbacks. Before that he spent a season with the Jaguars as assistant QB coach. He entered the NFL with the Jaguars as a scout in 2008.

NFL QB coach is a long way to go for a guy who 12 years ago was a walk-on long snapper at Nebraska.