Raiders GM: ‘Stick with our plan … the results will come’

SARASOTA, Fla. — As someone who monitors the tone of his team’s fan base, including on social media, Raiders general manager Dave Ziegler shares Raider Nation’s frustration over a season that hasn’t met expectations.

And just as the 2-5 start under the first-year leadership of Ziegler and Josh McDaniels eats at the fans, it eats at him, too.

“The frustration of the fan base is totally warranted,” Ziegler said Wednesday from the Raiders’ practice base. “And I can appreciate their passion. And for me and for Josh and the organization, there’s nothing more that we want than to win football games and to see this fan base get what they deserve, which is a consistent winner.”

But at the same time, Ziegler isn’t going to let a seven-game sample deter him from continuing to honor the long-range plan designed to set up a franchise that has produced two winning seasons in the past 20 years.

“We were hired to change the culture and develop the culture here,” Ziegler said. “We were also hired to build a football team that could sustain and win.”

No matter how frustrating the short-term results have been, Ziegler will stay true to the process. That includes trying to compete for a playoff spot this season while also doing an assessment of the football operation.

“We’re seven games into a new regime, a new organization, a new way of doing things,” Ziegler said. “For us, it hasn’t gone as quick as we would have liked it to go, but we’re not wavering from our approach. We’re going to stick with our plan, improve it as we go along, and we’re confident the results will come.”

That included resisting the urge to swing a deal at Tuesday’s trade deadline that might have offered short-term benefits but would have come at the expense of future assets. Ziegler said he spoke to all 31 teams, but despite “tons of talks,” he opted against jeopardizing the long range for the short range.

“You can make mistakes when you get overaggressive and you’re just doing something to do something,” Ziegler said. “At the end of the day, the value didn’t fit for us.”

As it relates to the immediate goal of getting more out of this season, Ziegler was succinct in what needs to happen.

“We need to execute better,” he said.

The long range is more complex.

Ziegler and McDaniels inherited a team that rallied down the stretch to win four straight games and make the playoffs. But there is sometimes a difference between a team that makes the playoffs and a “playoff” team. The Raiders needed three last-gasp game-winning field goals during that four-game run and for other teams to stumble to sneak into the postseason.

It’s also a team that has received minimal returns from a slew of draft picks and free-agent signings over the previous four offseasons.

By the time the Raiders played their first game under McDaniels, only one of their previous six first-round picks had made any meaningful contribution, and three were no longer with the team. All three — Henry Ruggs, Damon Arnette and Alex Leatherwood — were selected in 2020 or 2021.

Of the seven-player 2020 class, all of whom were selected in the first 139 picks, only fourth-rounders John Simpson and Amik Robertson are still on the roster, and both are reserves.

Meanwhile, of the key free agents the Raiders signed from 2019 to 2021, the vast majority were busts.

Between the draft and free-agent failures, Ziegler and McDaniels were confronted with a roster that needed to fill more than 30 spots from last season.

That isn’t to excuse the disappointing start, but it does point out some of the challenges they faced from a roster perspective and the dynamic they are trying to correct.

“We can’t let the results of seven games steer us in a different direction,” Ziegler said. “We have a plan. We have an approach that we’re going to stick with, that we believe in.”

Contact Vincent Bonsignore at vbonsignore@reviewjournal.com. Follow @VinnyBonsignore on Twitter.