The Raiders finished seventh in the league in points scored and sixth in offensive yards during the 2016 season, which usually isn’t the kind of year that’s followed by a change in offensive coordinator unless that coordinator is moving on to a head coaching job.
Bill Musgrave isn’t a head coach, but he won’t be back in Oakland. Musgrave did not get a new contract after finishing the final year of his deal and he’s been replaced by former quarterbacks coach Todd Downing, who realizes that there’s a lot to work with offensively.
Downing said that he won’t be “changing [the offensive scheme] just for change’s sake” and that his goal for 2017 will be finding tweaks that make the Raiders even better at what they already do well.
“Oh, it will be very subtle,” Downing said, via ESPN.com. “We’re going to keep the same system terminology. There’s no reason to change any of that stuff. All we’re doing right now is finding the ways that we can all individually do our jobs better, prepare our positions better, and how we can just quarter-turn a couple things to make the offense as efficient as possible.”
One change that Downing plans is for quarterback Derek Carr to have more opportunities to make changes at the line of scrimmage than he had under Musgrave over the last two seasons.