It's wild to think of all the potential scenarios in which Raiders owner Mark Davis fired Josh McDaniels late on Tuesday.
The news came in the dead of night when the "safe" coaches around the league were sleeping. Most of them, anyway. We can imagine Mike McDaniel in front of a computer, unblinking, watching film at 2 a.m. or Robert Saleh lifting weights in his home gym (how else can he maintain that body?).
For the Raiders in the Pacific Time Zone, the unpleasant conversation may have taken place at someone's home or a late-night diner. The most probable scenario is just a phone call.
But who wants to hear about that? Instead, Barstool Sports' PFT Commenter floated a fake story about McDaniels' sacking that seemed 100 percent real. People on Twitter bought it and ran away with it.
Sorry to break it to you: Josh McDaniels was probably not fired via fortune cookie
First off, this sounds like something Jim Irsay would do, not Mark Davis.
Second, hats off to PFT Commenter for writing a semi-hilarious, semi-cringe story about Josh McDaniels that sounds so true yet so unbelievable at the same time. Other than "The Athletic premium plus instant-inbox" jab, the satire-spun tale reads as a very plausible situation. It was the night of Halloween when the news came out, and the ex-Raiders head coach absolutely seems like the kind of guy who would go "all-out" for Halloween.
Keeping in mind that this is the same guy who traded Darren Waller to the Giants after he didn't receive an invite to Waller's wedding, yes, McDaniels would do something as petty as dressing up as Mark Davis. fake wig and all.
Davis' affinity for P.F. Chang's is well-documented, so throw that into the narrative as well. Sprinkle in a zany object like a fortune cookie, break open the punch line, and you have yourself a soon-to-be viral addendum to the McDaniels breaking news headline.
One can only dream of this sly, fictitious story actually unfolding in Vegas. But usually, the real thing tends to disappoint, as Mark Davis has found out the hard way in the last two years.
