There have been exactly two moments in Las Vegas Raiders history when the team started a season at 3-0. The first was 2021. The current Raiders team, operating in its ninth season in Las Vegas, matched that record through the first three weeks of 2026 under a first-time head coach, a quarterback drafted first overall out of Indiana, and a front office that has been systematically rebuilding the roster since the 2025 campaign produced a 3-14 record and the kind of structural reset that precedes genuine organizational change.
The 2026 Raiders beat Miami 27-13 at Allegiant Stadium in Week 1. They went to Los Angeles and beat the Chargers 26-14 in Week 2. They went to New Orleans and beat the Saints 35-27 in Week 3. Three games, three road or prime-time caliber tests, three wins. The team sits atop the early AFC West standings alongside a Kansas City Chiefs team that is also 3-0, which means the division race the Raiders have not won since 2002 is already generating the kind of comparative urgency that makes October games matter.
Who Klint Kubiak Is
Klint Kubiak was named Las Vegas Raiders head coach in February 2026, his first head coaching job at any level of professional football. He came from the Seattle Seahawks, where he served as offensive coordinator. Before that, he was an offensive coordinator and quarterback coach across multiple NFL stops.
He is the son of Gary Kubiak, who won Super Bowl XLVIII as head coach of the Denver Broncos and spent decades in NFL offensive coaching. The coaching lineage runs deep, which means Klint Kubiak did not arrive at a head coaching role as an unknown quantity to NFL front offices even without prior head coaching experience. The search that produced his hiring was led partly by Tom Brady, who took a minority ownership stake in the Raiders and has been publicly involved in the organization’s direction.
Brady’s role in the coaching search adds a layer of accountability and visibility to Kubiak that typical first-year head coaches do not carry. When the owner who helped hire you is Tom Brady and the team starts 3-0, the story writes itself. When the team struggles, that ownership context makes the narrative heavier than it would otherwise be.
Kubiak hired Mike McCoy as assistant head coach and Andrew Janocko as offensive coordinator. Rob Leonard, promoted to defensive coordinator, completes the staff architecture that produced three consecutive victories to open the year.
The Fernando Mendoza Experiment
The 2026 NFL Draft produced one of the more high-stakes quarterback selections in recent memory when the Raiders took Fernando Mendoza out of Indiana with the first overall pick. Mendoza’s college career generated the kind of statistical production and mechanical evaluation that scouts translated into a top pick. The Raiders’ decision to draft him first overall, rather than signing a veteran quarterback to run the offense while a rookie developed, was a declaration of organizational intent.
Kirk Cousins is also on the roster. The Raiders signed Cousins to a five-year, $172 million deal in April, which is an unusual investment in a veteran quarterback for a team that spent its first overall pick on a quarterback in the same offseason. The coexistence of Cousins and Mendoza on the same roster reflects either a thoughtful veteran mentor arrangement or an expensive redundancy, depending on which quarterback is actually winning football games.
Through three weeks, the Raiders’ offense is producing. They have averaged 29.3 points per game through the first three wins. Whether Mendoza or Cousins is driving that production, and what the plan looks like when the first serious adversity arrives, will define how the offense is actually constructed.
Tyler Linderbaum, the center signed to a three-year, $81 million deal in the same offseason, was a significant offensive line investment. Protection and interior line play are the unsexy underpinnings of any quarterback’s performance. That the Raiders invested at center specifically, in addition to the quarterback positions, suggests offensive infrastructure thinking rather than simply acquiring a name.
What the 3-0 Start Actually Means
Through three weeks, the Raiders have beaten a Miami team that was expected to be competitive, a Los Angeles Chargers team that has been one of the AFC’s more capable rosters in recent years, and a New Orleans Saints team on the road. No single result is definitive. Three consecutive wins, covering different contexts and different opponents, begin to suggest something about what the team actually is.
The franchise last made the playoffs in 2021, and the four years since have been a sustained organizational difficulty: coaching changes, front office restructuring, roster turnover, and two consecutive seasons with fewer than five victories. A 3-14 record in 2025 was painful in the way only a season without wins can be painful, but it generated the first overall draft pick and the organizational permission to rebuild without defensive compromise.
The 2026 version of this roster is the result of those accumulated decisions. Maxx Crosby on the defensive line provides the established pass-rushing anchor that any defensive system needs to build around. The additions around him, and the coordinator changes that Kubiak made in taking the job, reflect a coherent defensive philosophy rather than the reactive moves that struggling organizations make when they are trying to patch rather than construct.
If the Raiders sustain anything close to their early-season performance through the October portion of the schedule, the conversation around the franchise shifts in ways it has not shifted in years. A winning season would end two consecutive sub-five-win years. A playoff appearance would end a four-year drought. An AFC West title would end a 23-year absence.
Those markers exist on a distant horizon in early October. But they exist, and they are legible for the first time in a long time, which is itself a meaningful change in the Raiders’ relationship to their own expectations.
Las Vegas and the Raiders’ Cultural Position
The Las Vegas Raiders occupy an unusual position in the city’s sports landscape. They arrived in 2020 with considerable fanfare and the opening of Allegiant Stadium, a $1.9 billion facility that has since become one of the more versatile entertainment venues in the country, hosting Super Bowl LVIII in February 2024 and functioning as a concert and event venue during the NFL offseason.
The Raiders’ fanbase is one of the NFL’s more geographically distributed communities. Silver and black has a following that extends across California, Nevada, and beyond, built through decades of franchise history in Oakland and Los Angeles before the Las Vegas relocation. That fanbase travels to Allegiant Stadium in numbers that show up in the game-day environment, which has become one of the better crowd experiences in the league when the team gives fans something to respond to.
A 3-0 start gives fans something to respond to. The sellout that will arrive for the Week 4 home game against Kansas City, when two undefeated AFC West teams meet at Allegiant with early divisional implications, will be one of the louder home game environments the stadium has produced. Las Vegas crowds for meaningful Raiders games have shown the capacity to be genuinely imposing. Week 4 will test whether the 2026 team can sustain the early momentum against the most direct benchmark available.
Key Takeaways
The Las Vegas Raiders started the 2026 NFL season 3-0 under first-year head coach Klint Kubiak, matching the franchise’s best opening record from 2021. Wins over Miami, the LA Chargers, and at New Orleans frame a roster built around first-overall pick Fernando Mendoza at quarterback, Maxx Crosby on defense, and a front office that has been systematically rebuilding after back-to-back sub-five-win seasons.
The rebuild’s success is not yet confirmed by three weeks of football. What is confirmed is that the Raiders are a different team from the one that went 3-14 in 2025, that Klint Kubiak’s first head coaching campaign has started at the best pace possible, and that the AFC West race, with Las Vegas and Kansas City both at 3-0, already has the competitive tension that makes October Raiders games matter in ways they have not recently.
Sources:
– Las Vegas Raiders official, 2026 season: https://www.raiders.com/team/schedule
– ESPN, Raiders 2026 season results: https://www.espn.com/nfl/team/schedule/_/name/lv
– Las Vegas Review-Journal, Raiders 2026 coverage: https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/raiders/
– NFL.com, Fernando Mendoza draft profile: https://www.nfl.com/prospects/fernando-mendoza/
