The Raiders continued with their head coaching search and that continue rolls into National Championship Day.

That plus more on today's edition of the Locked on Raiders podcast for Monday, January 19th, 2026.

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We'll do that, segment number three.

Segment number two, we'll talk about the national championship game. Indiana versus Miami, number 1, versus number 10. Everything on the line, Fernando Mendoza, another opportunity to see the guy who potentially, most likely, will be the rate of starting quarterback in 2026. So we'll talk about him. You'll hear about him coming up in segment number two. Here is segment number one. It's all about the head coaching search. So news and notes, all head coaching. We'll jump into that after I tell you about the title sponsor of the show, which is Fandul. Fandall is officially in playoff mode. Every game day during the NFL playoffs, Fandle's giving customers even more ways to get in on the action.

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So just a couple updates real quick.

The Raiders have been fast and furious with requesting interviews and also conducting interviews.

And that's going to continue today.

Tom Pelliserra from the NFL Network actually tweeted this out on Saturday.

Former Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel scheduled an interview with the Raiders on Monday in

Miami for their head coaching job per sources. A fascinating candidate for Las Vegas,

which owns the number one overall pick and potentially the right to draft Indiana

quarterback Fernando Mendoza. So that's from Tom Pelliserro. That was the first time that

we had heard anything about Mike McDaniel being in the mix with the Raiders. And what kind of threw me off is, I'm assuming, and it's just an assumption, that he's going to end up being an offensive coordinator this year. He's taking a lot of interviews just to be an offensive coordinator after getting fired in Miami as the head coach. I think that Mike McDaniel is a really good OC. I think he's a very sharp offensive mind. And it's very intriguing to see if he would potentially be in line to take this Raiders job. Now, again, they're not leading any stone unturned. So they're cast in a very wide net. So I don't take too much to any of these interview requests. But it is intriguing to me that they're going to meet with him in person in Miami. Tom Brady, John Spitek, and company are all going to be there. Obviously, they'll be watching the game tonight, Fernando Mendoza in Indiana versus Miami. So that's an intriguing one right there, only because a lot of these jobs that he's been, you know, interviewing with for OC, he's going to eventually be a head coach, right?

He's going to be there, like in Detroit, for example. He'll be there a year, maybe two, and then he'll end up being a head coach again, just because, again, these sharp offensive minds, they always get posed a way to be head coaches. But if he were to take the job with the Raiders as the head coach. He would be the guy. He would be the play caller. I'm intrigued to see what kind of

staff he could put together. Obviously, the team's got to

be able to win in the cold, right? That's something that Miami was never able to do, win in the cold weather. And I know the Raiders don't face a lot of teams that are in cold weather, but you don't want to have that Achilles heel. You don't want to have that team that I like to call

it's too soft to go play in the cold, right? Look at the games that we saw over the weekend.

Saw a lot of cold weather, right? So if you're going to go deep into the playoffs, there's a good chance that you can end up a place like Chicago where it felt like, what, negative 10 degrees with the wind chill out there. I mean, there's scenarios that go in place, like New England. Look how the weather was ugly out there over the weekend as well. So I'm intrigued by McDaniel, and I really am interested to see what kind of staff he could put together. But that's not the only in-person interview that they're having today. Also, Panthers' defensive coordinator, Igero Evereaux Evereaux, is actually going to interview in person. This is from Jeremy Fowler from ESPN. He said he's going to interview in person for the Braiders Day coaching job next week in South Florida. Everow met virtually with the club this week. He also has a Pittsburgh Steelers interview coming up. So if you're keeping track, in-person interviews with Mike McDaniel and Ejero Everro will satisfy the Rooney Rule. That's from Ryan McFadden from ESPN. So I bring that up, not to talk and wax poetically about the Rooney rule, but to say that if the Raiders did, in fact, decide that they wanted to make a hire, they wanted to make an offer to a head coach, they could. They'd be compliant. All the boxes has been checked. So that to me is interesting that that's going to be the second interview is a defensive-minded guy. I've been very much in the camp that they're probably going to go get a young offensive mind. And I just don't know if Everow is actually ready to be a head coach yet. But again, it's going to be the second interview that they've had with him. That'll be the first second interview that we've actually heard so far. And again, it's going to be an in-person

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