The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have won the NFC South four years in a row and have made the playoffs in each of the past five seasons, winning a Super Bowl ring in the process. There was a pretty simple rule for their success.
No BS.
So says Bruce Arians, the Buccaneers’ former head coach who still works as an adviser for the organization. That’s a major reason he expects big things out of new Las Vegas Raiders general manager John Spytek.
“You can’t have a personnel department or coaching staff that doesn’t work together,” Arians said in a recent phone interview. “It just leads to the same bulls— of, ‘Well, we don’t have any players,’ and ‘Oh, they can’t coach ’em.’ They’ve got to work together so you know what you’re looking for to build your team. The coaches and scouts were hand-in-hand … and Spy’s been a big part of that.”
It’s a directive that Spytek has brought with him to Las Vegas after spending the last nine years in Tampa. Spytek is known for his eye for talent, and he worked closely with the Buccaneers coaching staff throughout his rise in the organization.
“He’s really, really sharp, especially in evaluation — pretty much at all positions,” Arians said.
Spytrek was hands-on, which he promises to be with new Raiders coach Pete Carroll. He and minority owner Tom Brady were involved in helping Carroll hire his assistant coaches, including Chip Kelly as the offensive coordinator.
GO DEEPER
Mark Davis hopeful new coach Pete Carroll and GM John Spytek can turn Raiders around
Spytek, 44, was a scout for the Philadelphia Eagles and Denver Broncos for 10 years before joining the Buccaneers in 2016. And, yes, he took his job home with him.
“I tell my wife all the time, the nature of a scout is to always be watching and observing, so I’m always watching and observing,” Spytek said during his introductory news conference. “It’s such a great quality. People will tell you the truth in this business if you find the right people, and our job as scouts … is to get to the root of who people are and decide whether or not we want to add them to our organization. That’s ultimately what we’re trying to do.”
Spytek grew up outside of Milwaukee in Pewaukee, Wis., and dreamed of playing football at the University of Michigan.
That dream came true and led to his first scouting assignment — himself. After he arrived on campus in Ann Arbor and went through his first practice, he saw an immediate disparity in talent, which included a certain future Hall of Fame quarterback in Brady, then a senior. But all teams need “glue guys who do the dirty work,” Spytek said, and the linebacker became a core special teams player at Michigan. Spytek also discovered the one thing he was really good at: watching game film.
A year out of college, Spytek got an internship with the Detroit Lions where he cut up film, filed scouting reports and drove players and coaches to and from the airport. A new dream was born, one Spytek recalled when he was sitting next to Carroll two weeks ago.
“When I dreamt about having one of these jobs, I always wanted it to be with an iconic franchise like the Raiders,” Spytek said. “I’m not sure I ever got far enough in my dreams as a young kid in Pewaukee, Wis., that I could be sitting up here with the Raiders, but here I am.”
An opportunity like no other. #RaiderNation pic.twitter.com/5HMgyrMkVi
— Las Vegas Raiders (@Raiders) January 27, 2025
Spytek saw firsthand how competitive the Raiders were last season despite their 4-13 record. In Week 14 in Tampa, the Raiders trailed by 4 points in the fourth quarter before the Buccaneers pulled away for a 28-13 win. Now, it’s Spytek’s job — along with Carroll and (from the shadows) Brady — to give the organization some stability and long-overdue success.
“There’s just some teams where it means a little bit more,” Spytek said. “There’s just some teams where the NFL is better when they’re crushing it. … I cannot be more excited to get started and to get started with coach Carroll here.”
When Spytek landed his first full-time NFL gig as a college scouting assistant with the Eagles in 2006, he was surrounded by a loaded front office and coaching staff. GM Tom Heckert led a personnel department that included three future GMs in Jason Licht, Ryan Grigson and Howie Roseman. Head coach Andy Reid’s coaching staff had five future NFL head coaches: Pat Shurmur, David Culley, Steve Spagnuolo, Sean McDermott and John Harbaugh.
The brain trust provided plenty of knowledge for Spytek to soak up.
“I tried to learn so much from every person that I was around,” said Spytek, who spent five seasons with the Eagles, three each with the Cleveland Browns and Broncos and nine with the Bucs. “I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I met so many wonderful people along the way that I worked great with (who) helped me get to where I’m at.”
Spytek’s breakthrough came when he was promoted to national scout with the Broncos in 2014.
Trying to find the right players was a rush.
“I get a natural high from watching guys compete,” Spytek said last year. “It’s hard to describe the joy when you find a player.”
While Denver went on to make the playoffs for the fourth season in a row, the front office felt the team — led by Peyton Manning — was capable of more. That led them to fire coach John Fox and replace him with Gary Kubiak in 2015.
When Kubiak was getting up to speed that offseason, he leaned on Spytek.
“What I remember about Spy is he was one of the people that (was) giving me a grasp on the team, what I had, what they thought our strengths were, what we had to do to continue to move forward and have a chance to win a championship,” Kubiak said in a phone interview. “He helped get me comfortable with the team so that I could get in there and work with my coaches and start to break down our needs and get ready for the draft. He was a big, big asset to me.”
The Broncos won Super Bowl 50 in Kubiak’s first season as coach.
“It takes certain people to be leaders of others,” Kubiak said. “And Spy, that’s what he’s got in him. … He’s a very upbeat, positive, good person that’s very good at motivating others around him. They didn’t want to let him down.”
John Spytek chats with Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby after his introductory news conference on Jan. 27. (Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
Every offseason in Tampa Bay, Spytek would address the media on the third day of the NFL Draft, as Licht, the GM, wanted to give his guy some shine. Spytek would list off each member of the front office who had a role in the draft process. There was a lot of talk about the family atmosphere in Tampa Bay, and Licht and Spytek were close.
“I worked with him 20 years ago with the Eagles,” Licht said in a phone interview. “Our wives are the closest of friends, our kids are with each other every other day and we lived four blocks away from each other.”
Licht and Spytek would often try to convince the other — with game film — that his opinion on a player was wrong. It became their schtick.
“He was my right-hand man in personnel,” Licht said. “He is a very intelligent, confident person who is very collaborative. He is a very curious person who is not afraid to enter the unknown, and when we went through some dark times here, I relied on him to be the positive force.”
In 2020, Licht needed a boost when the Buccaneers first started talking about bringing in Brady at quarterback — in what eventually would be a Super Bowl-winning move.
“The initial calls to Tom were from me,” Licht said, “but putting the plan together, John kept telling me that we’ve been building this team for a few years and, ‘If you build it, he will come.’ So we coined it ‘Operation Shoeless Joe Jackson.’”
In the real-life “Field of Dreams,” Brady signed with the Bucs and asked Licht to assign him someone with whom he would meet weekly and go over the scouting reports of opposing defensive players. That was Spytek, who would meet with Brady for several hours every week.
“That’s where John and Tom really forged their bond,” Licht said.
“When they were here, whatever Tommy needed from the pro personnel department, Spy made sure he had it,” Arians said. “It could be research on corners or defensive coordinators or whatever it was. They had a great pregame plan ready for him the week before.”
Following their Super Bowl win, the Buccaneers brought back all 22 starters, including re-signing free agents Ndamukong Suh, Shaquil Barrett and Leonard Fournette. Tampa Bay became the first team in the salary-cap era to return all 22 starters the season following a Super Bowl victory. In 2021, the Bucs tied a franchise record with nine Pro Bowl selections, including eight either drafted or signed during Spytek’s time with Tampa Bay.
“I think he’ll be excellent (as a general manager),” Arians said. “The Raiders have a good cap situation. He knows how to rebuild a roster because he was part of it in Tampa. We had four or five great drafts in a row, so he knows how to put it together.”
Spytek spent nine seasons with the Buccaneers, helping them to a title in Super Bowl LV. (Cliff Welch / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Spytek is proud of the way the Buccaneers roster was built but stresses there is “no perfect way” to do it.
“For us in Tampa recently, it was definitely draft and develop,” he said. “I think at the start of the season, 44 of the players that made the initial 53 were drafted or signed by us as undrafted free agents. I think all but two starters were.”
And he took some notes from Carroll’s early days with the Seahawks.
“I always admired the way that they started in Seattle, at the quarterback position in particular. They just kept taking shots and shots and shots,” Spytek said. “They traded, they drafted guys high, they found their way to Russell (Wilson). What an unbelievable move that was. He was a little bit different. He was under 6 feet at a time when most quarterbacks were over 6 feet, so (they were) willing to think outside the box a little bit.”
As all GMs do, Spytek will look to build the Raiders up through the draft. Much like he helped do in Tampa, however, he’ll also need to make savvy trades and free-agent signings. The roster needs a lot of work, but his track record gives plenty of reason to believe he’s capable of turning things around.
“It’s the best way to build a solid foundation of a team, and then to reward those players with second contracts because we know exactly what we’re doing,” he said. “But if the opportunity comes to sign a Tom Brady or a Baker Mayfield or trade for a Jason Pierre-Paul or Rob Gronkowski, just examples from my career, we will absolutely do that when the team is ready and the organization is ready for that.”
(Top photo: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
