McDaniels Prepares to Go Up Against Former Mentor Belichick

Regardless of all the ups and downs the Las Vegas Raiders have endured until this point in the season, Sunday's game against the New England Patriots is all that matters to the Silver and Black right now.

While the Week 15 showdown is a must-win for the Raiders, it also serves as a reunion between Raiders Coach Josh McDaniels and his former team, where he spent 13 years as an offensive coordinator and was part of all six of New England's Super Bowl titles in his 18-year coaching career with the club.

Not only that, but McDaniels will be going toe-to-toe with his former mentor, one of the greatest coaches in the history of the game, Bill Belichick.

"I mean, look, it's obvious I wouldn't be here, or even in the National Football League, if it wasn't for Bill," McDaniels said in his Wednesday press conference. "Robert [Kraft], Jonathan [Kraft] gave me a great opportunity a long time ago. He's been invaluable to me in a lot of ways. Hard to measure all of them. Obviously, football background, understanding how this league works. I got to see firsthand how to try to do it the right way. His philosophy on everything: off-season, training camp, in-season, postseason, evaluations, draft, free agency. He gave a lot of his time to me, and I was able to hopefully pick up as much as I could. Still I got a lot to learn. He was a great mentor for me, not only in football, but also just in in terms of when I got there. I was 23-24 years old, so basically I grew up there. I'm indebted to them forever for that.

"And getting to go back there after I had my experience with Denver, I think that was really [an] important period of time for me because I knew what I had done and what I had experienced, and I got to kind of take some time and really try to soak in: ‘Alright, I know I didn't do that very well.’ And now I'm watching him the second time around, and maybe the first time I didn't even know to look for it, and now I'm looking for different things. How he handles adversity, what he's doing here in the off-season, how he's handling the bye week? What's he doing in April, May, June, etc., that maybe I wasn't even clued in on that existed before I left. And so, it gave me a great opportunity to kind of look at it through a different lens and really try to take some time to process those things while I was watching somebody who's obviously the best that's ever done it do it again.

"The time for me was important for me personally and obviously, like I said, he's always given to me time, attention and information. He's been very open and honest with me about everything, and I wouldn't be standing here if it wasn’t for him.”

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