John Spytek

Born in August 1980, the son of Wisconsin alumni whose father played Badger baseball, he starred as a two-way end at Catholic Memorial High School in Waukesha under Bill Young. As a senior he earned first-team all-league honors on defense and second-team on offense; across his three starting seasons Memorial went 30–4 with a state title and two runner-up finishes. He chose Ann Arbor over other Big Ten offers because he never wanted to wonder what if Michigan.

He played outside linebacker for the Wolverines from 1999 to 2002, overlapping one season with Tom Brady, earned a general-studies degree and a sports-management master's, and entered the league as a Detroit Lions operations intern in 2004. Philadelphia scouting, Cleveland's director of college scouting at age twenty-nine, a Denver area and national scout role that produced a Super Bowl 50 ring, and nine Tampa Bay seasons as director of player personnel, vice president, and assistant general manager followed, capped by Super Bowl LV beside Brady again. Tampa Bay under his personnel tenure returned all twenty-two Super Bowl LV starters in 2021, the first salary-cap-era team to do so.

Owner Mark Davis named him the Raiders' sixth general manager on January 24, 2025, on a five-year deal. Off the field, he and his wife, Kristen, co-founded the National CMV Foundation after their daughter Evelyn died of congenital cytomegalovirus. Pewaukee still lists him as hometown; the league now lists him as the architect of a Silver and Black rebuild.