Bill Musgrave is out in Oakland but the Raiders won’t be going out of house to look at candidates. Quarterbacks coach Todd Downing is being promoted to OC, Albert Breer of The MMQB tweets. 
[RELATED: Raiders Part Ways With OC Bill Musgrave]
Downing was a “hot” coach and had been contacted about “four or five jobs” around the league, a source tells Vic Tafur of the San Francisco Chronicle (on Twitter). Ultimately, the Raiders had to make a choice and they opted to bump up Dowling and let Musgrave’s contract lapse.
Downing, 36, first broke into the NFL coaching ranks as a low-level assistant with the Vikings in 2003. Since then, he steadily moved up the ladder with stops in St. Louis, Detroit, and Buffalo before landing in Oakland. Downing got some good football out of Matthew Stafford when he was the Lions’ QB coach and the league has taken notice of what Downing has been able to do recently with Derek Carr.
Given that the Raiders acted quickly to fill their offensive coordinator vacancy, only one club — the Jets — is currently looking for a new offensive play-caller on offense. Follow all the latest coordinator news by bookmarking PFR’s Offensive/Defensive Coordinator Tracker.
Sometimes you have to make tough decisions. downing was impressive with what he had done with Carr but let’s not dismiss Musgrave as a failure. He was the best Offensive Coordinator in years. Carr was only the second QB of the Raiders to throw over 30 touchdowns and we had two receivers get over 1k yards. Very good numbers! His issue was in the first half most of the time. Conservative play calling with too many screens and ugly bootlegs. Even Cook threw an interception in the playoffs because of that same play they do where QB rolls out left and then throws back to the side right. Ugly play that hardly ever works. Only one time early in the season did it work with Cooper. Never after. First half play calling was never aggressive. Never went down the field to cooper or crabtree or holmes. Also never used Roberts as a slot receiver like they should have.
I don’t see it tough at all. Mukgrave was so predictable . Everyone was giving him praise for something he didn’t do. Our offense moved the ball because of our players. 7 of our wins were 4th Quarter come backs when Carr would take over the calls and Mukgrave had no input. Didn’t you ever notice many times we would stall out because we would run 1st down up the middle into the pack. Any time we ran it was obvious. I think we should shop Craptree too no while people think he’s good get a nice draft pick or maybe a Ol for Watson. I don’t know how many balls he dropped that hit his hands.
Musgrave didn’t try to run the ball and burn clock. 16 running plays in the playoff loss.
The Raiders offense was good in spite of Musgrave being the play caller. It was mainly all Carr coming into his own and the talent on offense. I think it was a good move to stay in house and promote Downing as play caller. Things that need to improved upon and what he needs to work on:
1. Find more creative ways to get Amari Cooper the ball. Downing should study film of when he was at Bama and how they used him very effectively.
2. Get the tight ends more involved. Need to get Walford or (a bigger receiver like Holmes) the ball more importantly Rivera(if Rivera stays) tight ends are QB’s best friend and Downing will need to create mis matches more often using tight ends. Maybe target Bamas OJ Howard in 1st Round if Rivera leaves?
3. Develop a legitimate screen game using quick explosive backs Richard and DWash and get them ball in space more. Our screen game was pretty much non existent. When we did run “screens” they would be more like flat dump offs with no blocking and would be 3 yard losses. Add a legit screen game to the playbook and the offense would be that much more explosive.
5. Don’t be so predictable. Downing needs to learn from Musgraves mistakes. Running up the middle on 1st and 2nd downs is not gonna cut it especially when D knows it. Throw in some reverses, mis direction plays, play action passes and get Carr rolling out and moving the pocket more. How about mixing up the blocking schemes at times and running some zone one cut runs for the smaller backs and running some more to the perimeter to stretch the D out at times. Maintain or gap power blocking and pulling and counter plays…..but add in some zone runs to the game plans when it is better to attack a certain defense in that way. JDR will need to now also hire an experienced QB coach to assist the inexperienced Downing with play calling, game planning, film breakdown and adjustments.