Raiders News: Shaun Herock joining staff as personnel advisor

As expected, the Las Vegas Raiders' new coaching staff and front office are starting to take form. It seems like every day, or every other, we get a new piece of news about who’s coming or going and today is no different as we got one of each.

NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport tweeted early on Monday morning that the Raiders are adding Shaun Herock to their player personnel department as an advisor.

Herock broke into the NFL as a scouting intern for the Atlanta Falcons before spending 18 years with the Green Bay Packers, ascending into the assistant director of college scouting role. He worked alongside Reggie McKenzie, who was also hired by the Packers in 1994, and the two spent their entire tenure in Green Bay together while McKenzie climbed up the ladder to become the director of football operations.

When McKenzie became the Raiders’ general manager back in 2012, he brought Herock with him to serve as the director of college scouting. Those two put together one of the best draft classes in the organization’s history, 2014, selecting Khalil Mack, Derek Carr, Gabe Jackson and Justin Ellis with their first four picks of the draft.

Herock also played a hand in a few other notable picks for the Silver and Black like Amari Cooper, Latavius Murray, Shelby Harris (also in the 2014 class), and Kolton Miller.

After McKenzie was fired towards the end of the 2018 season, Herock stepped up as the team’s interim general manager. However, he too was let go at the end of the season and Mike Mayock would take over the job.

Since then, Herock has been a scout for the Cleveland Browns, helping them make their first playoff appearance since 2002 in 2020. It’s worth noting that the Browns have done pretty well in the draft over the last three years, picking up players like Jedrick Willis, Greg Newsome and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah among others.

In other staffing news coming out of Las Vegas, former offensive coordinator Greg Olson is headed to join Sean McVay’s coaching staff with the Los Angeles Rams, per Albert Breer of The MMQB.

Breer doesn’t specify what role Olson will have with the Super Bowl Champions, but it clearly won’t be the same one he held with the Raiders for the past four seasons. Liam Coen from Kentucky will be filling Kevin O’Connell’s shoes, who was recently announced as the Minnesota Vikings’ head coach.

Olson served as the Rams’ quarterbacks coach under McVay in 2017 before joining John Gruden’s staff in Oakland, and Los Angeles only has an assistant QB coach currently listed on their website, so Olson could be getting his old job back. Otherwise, he might be looking at more of an advisor or analyst type of role.

UPDATE 2/21 6:49 p.m.

Tom Pelissero of NFL Network is reporting the Raiders are expected to hire Kennedy Polamalu as their running backs coach. Polamalu has coached the position at several notable locations in the college and professional ranks, like USC, UCLA, the Cleveland Browns and Minnesota Vikings. He was with the Vikings from 2017 to 2021 but obviously, was not retained by the new regime.

Kennedy is also the uncle of Hall of Fame safety Troy Polamalu.