Raider Fans Won’t Be Excited to See What Robert Spillane is Doing in New England

As the Raiders’ season is snowballing in the wrong direction, a few offseason personnel decisions are already starting to look like big mistakes.

The $85 million Geno Smith experiment is off to a rough start (to frame it nicely), and after one month, the Raiders appear to have downgraded at key positions defensively, as well.

The secondary is worse than it was a year ago, although third-round rookie Darien Porter looks like a player that is earning more playing time. That’s one glimmer of good news for the secondary.

The linebacker group, though, has turned into a serious concern. Tom Brady and GM John Spytek took a small swing a linebacker in the offseason and have walked away with a big miss through the first five weeks of the season.

On Monday, the Raiders released veteran linebacker Germaine Pratt, who showed up in June to bail out arguably the weakest linebacker room in the league. Something went sideways between Pratt and the organization in recent weeks, and no one in the 24 hours since his release seems to be at liberty to speak on what led to his departure.

Making matters worse, the day before Pratt was handed his pink slip, former Raiders’ linebacker Robert Spillane turned in one of the best games of his career in the Patriots upset win over the Bills.

Spillane has now posted three consecutive games with Pro Football Focus grades of 79 or higher, and his grade on Sunday (in Buffalo, no less) was the second highest of his career.

Back in April, The Athletic’s Vic Tafur talked about Spillane’s departure, and he believed it was the one move in free agency the decision-makers in Vegas would like to have back.

“Right now the linebackers [on the Raiders roster] just aren’t very good and I think they should have overpaid Spillane. I think overall the philosophy of not overpaying players is good and I think they did a pretty good job. But then in this one instance, when you have the cap space, knowing that the linebacker class was going to be so weak, I thought they should have overpaid Spillane and just got it done or whatever it took,” Tafur said on the Just Win podcast in April.

“They don’t want to admit this, but I think in hindsight, maybe looking back now, maybe they wish they had. I think what happened… the first bit of free agency hits, and obviously the Patriots did their homework… and it seemed like a really big number. It is a big number, but maybe there was some sticker shock and maybe you think you can make all your moves in free agency,” Tafur continued.

“Obviously, they wanted to not spend that much money in agency. So I think looking back, they probably wish they had done it, but I think at the time they thought it was too much money. I think people would be a lot higher on this team and a lot more confident about this defense if they had [Spillane]… looking back, maybe you do pay that price.”

x: @raidersbeat