New Las Vegas Raiders head coach Klint Kubiak is making his first spring message impossible to miss: the old logo comes off, and everyone starts from scratch. Photos that emerged this week from Day 1 of veteran minicamp showed Raiders players practicing without the Raiders shield on their helmets after Kubiak ordered the shields removed.
That small visual carried a bigger point. On April 23, Derek Carr said in a Home Grown with David & Derek Carr video, “I love what I’m about to say,” before praising the move and adding, “Klint took all the Raider shields off the helmet… Hey, you want to know why? Because every year in the NFL, you have to earn it. I hope he does it every year.” For a team trying to set a new standard under a new coach, the message was blunt: nothing is assumed, not even the branding.
The timing matters because Kubiak is not walking into a blank slate. Las Vegas signed Kirk Cousins this offseason as a potential placeholder and veteran to show Fernando Mendoza the ropes, a move that fits the broader effort to steady the offense while a long-term answer develops. Kubiak, who won a Super Bowl as the offensive coordinator for the Seattle Seahawks, has also been linked to a bigger build around Mendoza and Tyler Linderbaum, reflecting how much of the roster conversation now runs through the quarterback position and the pieces around it.
That is why the reaction around the Raiders’ quarterback plan has been so pointed. On April 16, former NFL player Chad Johnson told Vegas Sports Today that he thought it would be smart for Mendoza’s development to avoid being thrown in right away, saying, “They’re going to pick Fernando Mendoza if you understand the game and understand that they are in need of a quarterback despite getting Kirk Cousins via trade, whatever it may have been,” and adding, “Obviously, Kirk Cousins is probably going to be the starter.” Johnson said, “I would think it would be smart for the development of Fernando Mendoza instead of just throwing him out there to the wolves,” and argued that “Patrick Mahomes sat, Tom Brady sat,” before warning that teams too often “just throw them out there: ‘Hey, you’re our savior.’”
That is the tension inside the Raiders’ spring reset. Kubiak is projecting control and accountability with a symbolic move that says every player has to earn his place, while the roster itself still needs the kind of stability that Cousins can provide and Mendoza may eventually grow into. The helmet shields may be gone for now, but the real test is whether the culture Kubiak is trying to build can hold once the games start and the quarterback plan is forced to become something more than a message.
