The résumé
Mark Davis (96–151) · owner
Al Davis was a bastard the league feared. Coach. Commissioner. Owner. Commitment to excellence was a threat, not a slogan. He stole the team to Los Angeles and stole it back. He sued the league and won. He hired and fired like a man who had actually drawn plays in a dark room. Three Super Bowls with his name on the door. Whatever else he was, he was not a tourist.
Mark got the keys in 2011 because he was the son. Former staffers later told The Athletic he sleeps in, stays out of personnel, and thinks like a fan. One said he has no idea what he is doing. Another remembered him screaming on the team plane because the Wi-Fi died. He has posted two winning seasons in a decade and a half. Regular-season ledger since he took over: 96–151, two-and-out in the only two playoff games. He has never respected the general manager’s chair. He let Gruden pick Mayock. He let McDaniels pick Ziegler. He let Tom Brady pick Spytek. That is not delegation. That is a man who cannot stand to be the football person in the room, so he rents one and then fires him.
He spent six years and fifteen secret flights chasing Jon Gruden while four other head coaches were still on the payroll. He called the hiring the biggest day of his life and handed Gruden ten years and a hundred million dollars. Gruden ran the draft like a talk-show guest. The emails ended it. Davis dumped the interim who had just made the playoff. Then McDaniels. Then Pierce. Then Carroll, one year, 3–14. Then Kubiak, a first-timer with his father’s last name. The building always has a new head coach. It never has an owner who can pick one.
He pulled the club out of Oakland and dropped it in a black refrigerator on the Strip. Public money. A stadium that looks like a mausoleum for a team that still has not earned the zip code. He sold five percent to a retired quarterback with a FOX contract and called it vision. The vision is a suite, a haircut, and another press conference introducing the next man who will be blamed for the roster Mark keeps handing them.
The house read
Mark Davis is not Satan. Satan had a plan. Mark has a last name, a moving truck, and a gift for hiring the wrong grown-up. He is a piece of inherited furniture who treats a franchise like a souvenir stand. Al’s ghost still sells the jerseys. The son sells the vacancy.