Insider: Raiders Officially Makes Huge Decision on GM Champ Kelly

Interim head coach Antonio Pierce and interim general manager Champ Kelly have three games left in the season to prove that they deserve the full-time jobs with the Las Vegas Raiders. While the head coaching job is still fair game, The Athletic’s Vic Tafur believes that Kelly may already have the general manager job in the bag.

“While it seems likely that interim general manager Champ Kelly will get the full-time job in the offseason, [Mark] Davis is rooting for but still evaluating Pierce,” Tafur wrote in a December 15 column. “Pierce is Davis’ eighth coach since he took over for his late father in 2011. While many draw comparisons to interim coach Rich Bisaccia, who was not retained after 2021, Thursday night probably reminded Davis of 2014, when the late Tony Sparano was the interim coach.”

With the trade deadline happening before Kelly took over as general manager, it’s difficult to give him a full evaluation. However, Kelly was in the running for the Raiders general manager job last year before Dave Ziegler won out. He’s been a sought-after general manager candidate for a couple of years now so it wouldn’t be a big surprise if the team decided to keep him going forward.

Mark Davis Talks Evaluating Champ Kelly

Raiders owner Mark Davis has hired three general managers since taking over ownership of the team and all of them have struggled in the draft. It’s difficult to know how involved Champ Kelly was in Dave Ziegler’s drafts, which makes evaluating him a bit more difficult.

Davis recently opened up about how he’s going about evaluating Kelly.

“I think the easiest way to put it is it’s an extended interview process that we’re going through right now,” Davis told The Athletic’s Tashan Reed in a December 13 interview. “He’s got a jump on everybody else because he’s actually able to do the job and interact with me on a day-to-day basis. I waited until the trade deadline was over, so when Champ came in, it was more about the ability to work week to week and evaluate players and trying to make the 53rd man better than he was the week before, whether that’s finding a player on another team’s practice squad or anything like that. He’s bringing in players and trying to make our team better.”

One notable move Kelly made was picking up cornerback Jack Jones, who had an interception returned for a touchdown in the Week 15 win over the Los Angeles Chargers. Other than that, he hasn’t made many splash moves since taking over.

Mark Davis Is a Fan of Champ Kelly

As noted earlier, Mark Davis interviewed Champ Kelly for the general manager opening last year. He revealed his impression of the executive during the interview process.

“I liked Champ when I interviewed him a year and a half ago for the general manager job,” Davis told Tashan Reed. “I was really glad that he came along as the assistant GM. That was a natural transition.”

The fact that Davis already likes Kelly and he’s currently holding the position certainly gives him a leg up over other candidates. Kelly started as a scout for the Denver Broncos in 2007 and has worked his way up consistently. He’s certainly qualified at this point in his career to be a general manager of a team.