The 2022 and 2023 seasons are two years that have been burned into the memory of Las Vegas Raiders fans. This is partly because of how badly the team fared, but also because of the disaster that followed in former head coach Josh McDaniels’ leadership. Safety Jonathan Abrams, while passing by the Allegiant Stadium recently, was reminded of some bad memories from his time with the coach.

“I miss playing inside you,” he wrote, before going straight at his former head coach. “Josh McDaniels ruined everything we built! He should be arrested for sabotaging the organization and going to NE.”

To understand why that stings so much, we have to recall where the Raiders actually were before McDaniels showed up. Las Vegas entered the 2022 season with serious momentum, finishing 10-7 the previous year. They won four games back-to-back to end the regular season, and also made the playoffs under then-interim head coach Rich Bisaccia.

The team really liked Bisaccia. But Mark Davis, the team’s owner, was not sold. He picked McDaniels for the job, who was the long-serving Patriots offensive coordinator and had previously been the head coach of the Denver Broncos. Ironically, this one was a failed stint, too.

The Raiders collapsed during McDaniels’ tenure. The team dropped to 6-11 in the 2022 season, and the coach was shown the door in 2023. Former general manager Dave Ziegler and offensive coordinator Mick Lombardi were also out. In McDaniels’ two seasons with the Raiders, his overall record stood at 9-16. He is now with the New England Patriots as their offensive coordinator.

To be fair, Abram has his own reasons to carry a grudge. He was the Raiders’ first-round pick back in 2019, the 27th overall selection out of Mississippi State, and he spent years as a hard-hitting fixture in that secondary. However, everything was different after McDaniels became head coach in 2022. In April, the Raiders declined Abram’s fifth-year option. But McDaniels sped things up and released the safety midway through the 2022 season. Abrams was never able to reach his ceiling again, having posted more than 100 total tackles in 2021.

The former head coach has a long list of failures. He is known for letting veteran quarterback Derek Carr leave the Raiders without a replacement in hand. Las Vegas also went ahead and drafted Tyree Wilson in the 2023 draft, when they had the No. 1 pick, when a talented Jalen Carter was available. Another humiliating fact is that McDaniels was voted the worst coach by the NFL Players Association for the 2023 season.

Following the departure of McDaniels, Antonio Pierce was named the interim head coach. The locker room felt like it could breathe again. In Pierce’s first game as head coach, the Raiders scored more than 20 points for the first time in 2023. After that game, USA Today’s Levi Damien wrote that the players celebrated like a party, with cigars and whatnot. He told another reporter, “There’s a real ‘ding dong the witch is dead’ feeling to all this.”

The Raiders are now looking for another turnaround under first-time head coach Klint Kubiak. But unlike McDaniels, there’s a real air of excitement in Las Vegas about the new coach, who’s made some interesting decisions to rebuild this team. Let’s see how this one pans out for the Raiders.