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Podcast: Arkansas State Coach Jones on Legend of Saban

On Las Vegas Raiders Insider Podcast, Arkansas State Coach Butch Jones, a former Alabama assistant to Nick Saban, joins us to talk about the legacy of Nick and share some stories.

The Las Vegas Raiders have flipped the page to the 2024 offseason, and owner Mark Davis is officially on the hunt for the next permanent General Manager and Head Coach.

What direction will Davis go? Nobody knows, but the process is underway. We have said from the beginning that we expect Champ Kelly to be named permanent GM and Antonio Pierce to be the permanent head coach.

In our latest episode of the Las Vegas Raiders Insider Podcast, we discuss the latest on the Coach/GM search, Jon Gruden vs. the NFL, and much more.

You can watch the entire podcast above.

Butch Jones and Nick Saban

The criticism of Antonio Pierce as a rah-rah coach is unfair and ignorant. Pierce said: "When you talk about penalties, you talk about turnovers, style of play, the way we change as far as how we play, our execution, personnel groupings, decision making, all that stuff is a work in progress. I mean, there's going to be one winner at the end of the season. All the rest of us, we lost. The funny part about when people say, you're not an X and O guy, well, I'm like, how have I been in the league this long? How did I play this long? How do I get this opportunity? My job is not to call X and O's, that's why you hire coordinators, offense, defense, special teams. My job is to put the plan together to get us into the best position to win games and put the best personnel out there, the best 11, best call. And that's been my role and that's my job unless it changes and I become the coordinator. But right now, we have a really good defensive coordinator in Patrick Graham. He did an outstanding job this year. Nobody talks enough about what we've done defensively and the buy in. This was probably a group last year that we didn't buy into, right? Let's talk about that Las Vegas Raiders Transcript 1.8.24 part. And you’ve seen the development of a lot of young players on our defensive side of the ball play. They played really well, the second year players, rookies, undrafted guys, next man up mentality. That's a credit. Special teams, same thing with Tom McMahon and what he's been able to do with those guys. And you got to give credit to Bo [Hardegree]. Has it been what we always wanted? No. Is everybody happy? No. I get it. But he took on something that was very difficult, where maybe he didn't have as much say as the previous coaching staff allowed. But he took on a rookie quarterback who at the end of the season was playing really, really good football. And that rookie quarterback had a winning record with us."

From February 27 to March 4, 2024, the NFL Scouting Combine will be held at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Ind.

The NFL Draft will be held in Detroit, Mich., on April 25-27, 2024. The Las Vegas Raiders currently hold the No. 13 overall pick.

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