The Raiders are getting a lot of attention leading up to the NFL’s November 4 trade deadline, and most of that attention has been directed at Maxx Crosby and Jakobi Meyers.
There seems to be a chance Meyers will be traded before the deadline, but it doesn’t look like Crosby is going anywhere.
According to Sports Illustrated insider Albert Breer, Jackson Powers-Johnson is a player the Raiders have been listening to offers on, but they have evidently been turning away teams calling about two lesser-hyped veterans.
“Teams have called on TE Michael Mayer (whom Vegas could actually extend in the offseason) and CB Eric Stokes, and have been told no,” Breer reported on Friday.
Last week, Raider Nation Radio host Q Myers brought up Stokes as a player teams might call about, largely because of his expiring contract at the end of the season. The Raiders probably want to keep Stokes because of their lack of depth in the cornerback room, but they also might have interest in re-signing him at the end of the season.
As for Mayer, it sounds like the Raiders are already talking about re-signing him before he gets to the final year of his rookie contract.
With the trade deadline still four days away, the Raiders get one more opportunity on Sunday to assess the team before making any major trade decisions. A home loss to the Jaguars could, in theory, push Tom Brady and GM John Spytek to change course and go into full rebuild mode with the organization.
If the decision makers in Las Vegas decide to tear down the roster between now and next year, it would put 74-year-old Pete Carroll in a position he wasn’t expecting to be in when he took the job in January.
Less than two weeks ago, Yahoo Sports host Jason Fitz, who is a regular on the Raiders’ flagship radio station, said he thinks the head coaching situation in Las Vegas needs to change sooner than later if Carroll isn’t able to turn things around.
Fitz is one of the most respected commenters in the Raider media circles, so it’s no small statement when he shares a perspective like he did last week.
“Pete Carroll needs to step down as the coach of the Raiders,” Fitz said on Tuesday. “Maybe not today. Maybe not until the end of the season, but it is now abundantly clear that he is not going to be the answer for what long-term ails the franchise.”
“You know me… I think it’s fair to say I’m not over reactionary or a shock jock and I think you also know that as we came into this season, my expectations were that the Raiders would be a seven-win team. I didn’t come in calling for the playoffs. So when I say this, I’m not saying this because wild expectations weren’t being met. I’m saying this because the timeline no longer meets the coach’s timeline.”
“It’s really simple,” Fitz continued. “When you have a coach that openly admitted at the podium this week that they are further behind than he expected they would be, my question becomes what does the real rebuild look like?”
“It’s obviously not Geno [Smith] with Chip Kelly. It’s obviously not working this season, so now you’ve got to look at it and say ‘Okay, are we going to draft a quarterback? Are we going to bring in a new offensive staff? Are we going to start this glorious rebuild process?’ And if you do that, how do you do that with a coach that’s already the oldest coach in NFL history to stand on the sideline during a game?”
“There’s no way, in my mind If you are starting a rebuild, which I believe takes 2 or 3 seasons, Pete Carroll won’t be around to see the end of it. So, the sooner you figure out who’s actually going to run your team through the next 10 years through this rebuild process, the better for the organization.”
x: @raidersbeat
Who’s worse Spytek and Carol, Kelly or Josh McDaniel and his crew or AP Scott Turner and his GM, AP didn’t tear the team apart he had the locker room all he needed was a quarterback