Scott Gulbransen
Klint Kubiak changed his mind.
Three weeks after the Las Vegas Raiders announced their coaching staff without a quarterbacks coach — a decision that raised eyebrows given what’s coming April 23 — Kubiak has circled back and filled the spot. Per the NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero and Mike Garafolo, the Raiders are hiring longtime NFL assistant Mike Sullivan for the role.
Sullivan, 59, has been a quarterbacks coach four times over in this league: twice with the New York Giants, once with the Denver Broncos, and most recently with the Pittsburgh Steelers from 2021-23. He also has experience as an offensive coordinator with the Buccaneers and Giants. He’d been set to join Rutgers as a senior offensive assistant before Las Vegas came back around. The two have history, as Sullivan and Kubiak were on the same Broncos staff in 2018.
The hire matters for an obvious reason. Fernando Mendoza is almost certainly walking through that door in Pittsburgh on April 23 as the No. 1 overall pick and the Raiders have a complicated history of developing young quarterbacks. Sullivan helped bring Eli Manning along during New York’s 2011 Super Bowl run. He’s done this before.
When I wrote about this vacancy in early March, the thinking around the organization was that, with Kubiak, OC Andrew Janocko, and assistant head coach Mike McCoy, there were enough experienced offensive minds in the building to cover the position. That’s still true. But adding Sullivan doesn’t hurt any of that. It just means Mendoza has one more voice in his corner — a dedicated one — when the real work starts.
The staff question mark heading into 2026 was always Rob Leonard on defense, not the QB room. Sullivan’s hire doesn’t change that. But for a franchise that has botched quarterback development more often than not, getting this piece right matters. Kubiak made the call. Now we see what Sullivan does with it.
