Las Vegas Raiders general manager John Spytek spent his first year on the job learning what not to do. Now, with a revamped front office and a clear No. 1 pick in Fernando Mendoza, he’s determined to get it right.
Spytek admitted Tuesday that he conducted a full evaluation of his performance in last year’s draft, identifying areas where he fell short. Chief among them: trying to do too much himself.
“I wrote a lot of things down that I learned in my first year and things that I screwed up in my first year,” Spytek said. “And we’re not going to change too much, but we’ve got some new faces in the draft room with us this year.”
One of those new faces is assistant general manager Brian Stark, hired just days after the 2025 draft. Stark and Spytek have a relationship dating back more than a decade to their time together in Denver, and Stark is not afraid to challenge his boss.
“I think it’s an incredible opportunity that I have here with the relationship I have with (Spytek),” Stark said. “Obviously, he’s the boss and he’ll tell me what he thinks or if he disagrees and I’m not afraid to tell him if I see something different. I think he values that, and I value the relationship, and there’s a trust there that we can have open, honest communication, because there’s going to be (differences of opinions on player evaluations). I may watch different games than he watched during the eval, so we may see the player differently. And you’ve got to have those conversations to kind of find what our truth is on the player. So, you’ve got to have people that want to speak up and give their opinion and then work it out.”
The Raiders went 3-14 in Spytek’s first season, a campaign marked by tension between a front office focused on long-term rebuilding and a coaching staff that emphasized winning now. That coaching staff, led by Pete Carroll, was fired after one year. First-time head coach Klint Kubiak now leads the team, and the organizational alignment is far better.
Spytek acknowledged that his self-scout revealed a need to delegate more. “Not knowing everybody in the building, having my own vision that I was trying to teach to people about the way that we wanted to do it, how we wanted to build the kind of person we were looking for, I think I tried to do too much,” he said. “I think it’s always important to really have great people around you and trust and empower them to do their jobs, to support you as well as they can. And it’s really not about me, it’s about the team and the Raiders and the best decisions. And I’m just very grateful to have a great group of people around me.”
The Raiders hold 10 picks in this week’s draft, starting with the expected No. 1 overall selection of Fernando Mendoza. Whether Spytek’s second attempt yields better results remains to be seen, but the process — and the people — are different this time.
