A few weeks ago it looked liked Marcus Mariota would surely be traded. Several teams were said to be in talks with the Raiders, but ultimately Mariota didn’t want to adjust his contract to accommodate a trade and a trade still hasn’t happened.
Unfortunately for the Raiders and Mariota, the window to trade him may have closed. The first wave of free agency has ended and teams like the Patriots, Bears, and Washington Football Team have all invested in quarterbacks. Even if a team does circle back and pursue Mariota, he would no longer be the assumed starting quarterback and there is a lot less money under the salary cap for teams to work with.
The stare-down between Mariota and the Raiders seems to have at least cost Mariota a starting job and probably a good amount of money, too.
So who’s to blame for Mariota’s situation as it is?
From Mariota’s standpoint, most would agree that his career would have benefitted from a trade about three weeks ago. Mariota, it seems, wanted to pick his team and have the opportunity to negotiate a new deal. His representatives gambled that the Raiders would not carry his $10.725 million contract this far into the offseason.
When Mariota refused to re-work his deal to facilitate a trade, it was essentially a power play to force the Raiders to release him.
Now the leverage has shifted a little and the Raiders are using a weak quarterback market as a power play against Mariota to negotiate a pay cut.
Because Mariota’s deal doesn’t have any bonus dates between now and the start of the season, the Raiders can hold on to him right up until the first week of the regular season without any real financial commitment (Mariota has only a 100k workout bonus between now and then).
From the Raiders standpoint, they have operated well within their rights to move slowly on Mariota’s status with the team. While it may have done Mariota a favor to release him three weeks ago, what would the Raiders have benefitted by giving the Bears, Patriots, or Washington Football Team an upgrade at starting quarterback so early in the offseason?
It was reported again this week that the Raiders will release Mariota if they cannot trade him. So far that tactic has worked to initiate trades for Gabe Jackson and Rodney Hudson. We’ll see if it eventually does the same for Mariota.
twitter: @raidersbeat
Mariota is going to get a job one way or another. As soon as this “hybrid” offensive line gets decimated and Derek Carr inevitably goes down to injury, Jon Gruden will be saying that NOW he needs a quarterback. Oh, my mistake, he has the statistically worse quarterback in NFL history on his roster, Nathan Peterman. Yippee. The question is when will the myopic Mark Davis SEE that he has made a monumental mistake and “TRY” to correct it? Probably never. If he only had a brain.
Should have just traded humpty dumpty Carr, the 42% win rate QB, let’s just roll with that
If they had dumped Carr, they could have kept Gabe Jackson and Rodney Hudson and had Mariota at quarterback but instead Gruden CREATED a need that he didn’t have along the offensive line. The truly sad part is that Mark Davis has rewarded Gruden’s stupid behavior and probably will continue to do so. I can’t imagine how the other owners must look at him and what they are thinking about him when they have their annual owners meeting. If it’s anything akin to what Raider Nation thinks of him then they are all laughing at him behind his back and soon will be doing so to his face. Just like EVERYONE in the football world is doing to Jon Gruden and Mike Mayock.