It's media day over at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. Mike Mayock is heading into his second season as the Las Vegas Raiders' general manager. The team finished the 2019 season with a 7-9 record in its last year in the Bay Area, all while watching the San Francisco 49ers enjoy a dominant season on the way to a Super Bowl appearance.
Mayock and the Raiders are getting a fresh start in the desert, and they'd love to have the same success as their former-Bay Area rivals. Mayock was asked on Tuesday about San Francisco's seemingly "overnight success" in 2019 following a four-win season.
Mayock didn't like the term "overnight success" because he realizes how much effort went into overhauling the 49ers' roster and getting to the point where they were able to earn wins consistently.
"I don't think it happened overnight," Mayock told reporters. "Their quarterback (Jimmy Garoppolo) got hurt (in 2018), which artificially set the record back for a year. But what they've been building over several years is a group of talented defensive linemen (and) a culture. And everybody laughs about that word. I don't.
"Building a culture is way harder than people pretend it is. It's easy to say and hard to do, and that's why I give them so much credit, is they've built a culture on toughness, they run the friggin' ball, they believe in getting after the quarterback.
"I love what they've done, and I give them a ton of credit, but it didn't happen overnight."
#Raiders GM Mike Mayock says #49ers were not an overnight success story pic.twitter.com/euPtn5zXB1
— Cam Inman (@CamInman) February 25, 2020
