The Raiders don’t have their 2025 schedule yet, but they do know their opponents for next season.
The usual rival games will be circled on the calendar when the schedule comes out, and this year the Cowboys, Commanders and Eagles will be three of the more fascinating non-AFC West teams on the schedule.
But there’s a game on the schedule this year that not many are talking about, and it should mean more to Raider fans and the organization than it did a month ago.
Last month, after 10 days of stories calling the Raiders the “frontrunners” to sign Ben Johnson as their next head coach, it was announced on January 20 that the former Lions offensive coordinator had chosen the Bears.
“There [were] lots of conversations around the league about where Ben would go, even minutes up to when this story broke, where people thought he was going to Vegas. Brady made a really strong case,” The Athletic’s Dianna Russini said on the Scoop City podcast last month.
No doubt, it was a disappointment to the organization to lose Johnson, but it was the comments out of Johnson’s camp in the days after joining the Bears that surely ruffled feathers in the Raiders’ building.
A week after Johnson announced his decision to go to the Bears, his agent mocked the idea that his client was strongly considering the Raiders.
According to Rick Smith, who appeared on the 2nd City Gridiron podcast, the Raiders were never the front runners to get Johnson, and he acknowledged that he liked having the bad information out there.
“Initial gut reaction day one on the Raiders was ‘No go. Okay?” Smith said. “Tom Brady absolutely has an extremely compelling case that gets you to listen. The whole thing ‘Ben to the Raiders… great sources’ and all the other stuff, that was never right.”
Smith then confirmed he was happy to use the Raiders as leverage against the Bears.
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“Sometimes, going back to my job, things go viral that you’re like ‘I got to put a break on this’ and sometimes things go viral like ‘No, this is good. I like this’ and that viral thing [about the Raiders] was ‘I like this. Let’s just leave that out there.’”
Beyond that, a report from one of the league’s most respected insiders said Johnson was aggravated that the Raiders reached out to him in the first place.
According to Sports Illustrated insider Albert Breer, Johnson was not happy the Raiders reached out to him for an interview.
“When [Ben] Johnson and his camp planning things out, going back to November and December, they didn’t want to go through a full tour of interviews. The whole idea for them was to assess the openings and then decide which jobs [they] could legitimately see [themselves] taking,” Breer said last month on The Breer Report.
“There were a number of jobs they decided they wouldn’t see themselves taking and so they communicated to those teams quietly, ‘Don’t even put in request in, we don’t want to embarrass you, we don’t want to look like jerks, so we’ll respectfully decline [and] you won’t have to do anything officially, but we’re saying no to you and everyone will go on their merry way,’” Breer continued.
But according to Breer, ownership in Las Vegas wasn’t interested in taking ‘no’ for an answer, and didn’t care about the possibility of being embarrassed.
“The Raiders were one of those teams and despite all of that, the Raiders still put a request in. Johnson’s camp wasn’t happy about it,” Breer continued. “They wind up calling the Raiders and the Raiders basically said we’re going to get you on the phone with Tom Brady. So Tom Brady calls Ben Johnson’s camp… [and] Brady more or less promised to them we’re going to do what it takes to make this a first-class operation…”
Johnson had every right to proceed with interviews as he chose but combined with his reversal on the Commanders a year ago, there’s a chance he might be a little more complicated as an individual than what has been advertised.
If nothing else, Johnson and the Bears are going to be easy for Raider fans to root against going forward. The game against the Bears in 2025 gets a little more exciting and it should give Tom Brady and company a lot of satisfaction to beat Johnson and the Bears in Las Vegas next year.
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For what it’s worth, Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter said an AFC executive told him the Raiders “dodged a bullet” when they didn’t get Johnson, and even compared him to Josh McDaniels.
“I got a message from an AFC executive last night, after the news broke that [Johnson] was going to the Bears, who said he believed the Raiders had ‘dodged a bullet,’” Carpenter said on his Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast. “Not because of character, not because of his ability to coach, but because Ben is very introverted. He is very much an offensive genius. That’s factual. But remember when Josh McDaniels came [to the Raiders], people used the word ‘savant.’”
“I can attest to you that Josh McDaniels, the man, is a good man,” Hondo continued. “Raiders players liked him away from the building and nobody wished him ill will. But Josh was not a leader of mean that the head coach as to be. He’s more introverted, more quiet, more to himself. A lot like Ben Johnson… and this person who knows Josh very well and knows Ben Johnson very well… felt the Raiders dodged a bullet and called him Josh McDaniels 2.0.”
In a later podcast, Carpenter directly addressed the comments from Johnson’s agent.
“I can tell you this. I am no way calling anyone a liar,” he said. “But if the agent truly feels like the Raiders were never in contention, which I find very difficult to believe, he needs to just talk to his client and ask his client who he may have talked to. He’s going to hurt his client… [and] his agent is making it a very bad look.”