The résumé
Klint Alexander Kubiak · head coach
Gary Kubiak is the one the league still quotes. Ninth-round quarterback who spent nine seasons in Denver as John Elway’s backup, then spent the next era as Mike Shanahan’s offensive coordinator while those Broncos were the standard. Houston hired him as the Texans’ first real architect and he took an expansion leftover to the playoffs. Denver hired him back as head coach in 2015. He won Super Bowl 50. He did it with a roster and a spine, then walked away when his health told him to. That is a career. That is a name people borrow on purpose.
Klint is the son. Not the sequel. Safety at Colorado State until the shoulder went. Quality control at Texas A&M for pocket change. Quit for the oil fields, came back, then spent a decade hopping: Minnesota, Kansas, Denver, Minnesota again, Denver again, San Francisco, New Orleans, Seattle. Seven stops in twelve years. No head-coaching tape. No Super Bowl of his own to put next to his father’s. The Raiders, having just fired Pete Carroll after 3–14, made him the third head coach in three seasons on February 9, 2026, because the last name was already famous and the vacancy would not wait. The job opened because the last grown-up failed. They handed it to the photocopy.
His first official act of consequence was flinching. They used a 3–14 season to draft Fernando Mendoza first overall. Kubiak named Kirk Cousins the starter on September 2. He said he does not ask anyone to be a mentor. So the $57 million rookie holds a clipboard and the 38-year-old runs the offense. Reports had the minority owner in the FOX booth in on that call. A first-year coach taking quarterback advice from a five-percent tourist is not Gary’s tree. It is a committee with no adult.
Week 1 and Week 2 were Miami and an 0–2 Chargers team. Bowers inactive. The building is already writing origin stories off the softest two Sundays on the slate. This franchise eats coordinators who think the title changed the math. Carroll lasted one year. The one before that lasted one year. New Orleans is next. The urgency Cousins says he feels in the parking lot will not turn Klint into Gary.
The house read
The last name is a museum piece. The first name is a first-time coach who sat the pick and started the rental. Gary won the thing. Klint inherited the stationery.