It wasn’t a surprise that the Raiders traded Jakobi Meyers on Tuesday, but it seems like a handful of media personalities weren’t expecting the kind of compensation the Raiders received in the deal.
ESPN’s Mina Kimes commented on the trade on Tuesday afternoon and she pointed out that the return for Meyers was the equivalent of the Raiders getting a late third-round pick, which was reportedly what they were looking for in the first place.
“Pretty good return,” Kimes said on the Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny.
“I thought that was my first reaction, whoa, because they gave up a fourth and a sixth, which adds up to like a low third [round pick] if you do the math. That’s a decent return, I thought, for Vegas.”
“I get it. It makes sense. They’re also like in the mix to win the division or not to win the division, to make the playoffs. So it makes sense. I think it’s a teeny bit rich, personally, for at this point in the season, but I understand it.”
There was some skepticism in recent days that the Raiders would ultimately trade Meyers, but Raider Nation Radio host Q Myers made a point on Monday that probably lined up with what the Raiders were thinking in the situation.
It was rumored the Raiders might hold on to Meyers and try to collect a compensatory pick in 2027, but given the amount of salary cap room the Raiders are expected to have next year, there’s a good chance they are going to be too active in free agency to qualify for any compensatory picks in 2027.
“There’s a problem. The Raiders are comfortable with holding on to [Jakobi Meyers] and getting a compensatory pick if they don’t get the trade capital that they want in return. The problem with that is, they’ve got a lot of money in salary cap space next year, a lot, and we obviously know that they need a lot of talent on this team, so they’re going to be big spenders in free agency next year,” Myers said on the Locked on Raiders Squad Show podcast.
“Well, the compensatory situation is a math problem [because] you basically are rewarded based off of how much you spend and how much you lose. If they go out and spend as much as I anticipate them spending on some big-time free agents… that’s the math problem. And if they spend a lot of money like I anticipate and then they lose Jakobi, then he might end up walking for basically nothing because the math doesn’t math.”
“So it’s a math formula,” Myers continued. “I’m not a math guy, but I could tell you that that’s the problem that they have. They might end up getting into a position where a team knows, ‘Hey, I know they want a day two pick for Jakobi, we’re going to give them a day three and they’re going to take it because they don’t have, too many options.’”
For not having too many options, it seems like the Raiders probably got their best-scenario from the Jacksonville in the Meyers trade.
We do the same thing every year. We go the free agency route instead of signing our decent players and every year it bites us in the ***. We develop our players for other teams then overspend on their castoffs rinse and repeat.