Hue Jackson says Al Davis offered him Raiders GM job in 2009
While recently talking with Sports Illustrated's Jim Trotter, former Raiders coach Hue Jackson wondered what might have been if he had taken a job offered to him by late Raiders owners Al Davis in 2009. That job: Raiders general manager.
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After only one season in charge of the Raiders and after going a respectable 8-8, the organization fired coach Hue Jackson after the 2011 season, and just like that, Jackson disappeared into the anonymous world of former coaches searching for assistant gigs (Jackson found a home, again, in Cincinnati).
But while recently talking to Sports Illustrated’s Jim Trotter, Jackson wondered what might have been if he had taken a job offered to him by late Raiders owner Al Davis in 2009.
That job: Raiders general manager.
Oakland already had hired Jackson as the team’s offensive coordinator under then-head coach Tom Cable, but Davis apparently respected Jackson enough to offer him the GM job. Jackson told Trotter that the reason he didn’t take the job was because he loved coaching too much.
“Jackson says he turned it down because his passion is coaching and working with players,” Trotter writes. “He says he and Davis never discussed him taking the head coach position -- contrary to speculation that he accepted the coordinator position with an eye on the top job.”
Eventually, of course, Davis hired Jackson for the head coaching job, but after Davis died and his son, Mark Davis, took over ownership of the team, the Raiders hired GM Reggie McKenzie -- who then wanted to hire his own coach and released Jackson.
If Jackson had taken the GM job, Mark Davis, of course, still could have fired him and brought in his own general manager. But as we so often see, the coach is fired before the owner lets go of his GM. That means there’s a pretty decent chance Jackson would still be the Raiders GM if he had accepted Al Davis’ offer in the first place.
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