According to a report on Sunday morning, the Raiders did nothing with a contract proposal from Khalil Mack’s agent for six months before finally trading Mack to the Bears.
The report, which came from CBS Sports’ Jason La Canfora, indicated that the offer from Mack’s camp to the Raiders ended up being cheaper than what Mack signed for with Chicago.
Per La Canfora:
“The Raiders chose to move on without star pass rusher Khalil Mack before the start of the regular season after sitting on a contract proposal from the All-Pro for over six months, a proposal that was actually cheaper than what the Bears quickly signed Mack for last week, according to a team source.
Negotiations never progressed between the Raiders and Mack beyond their initial exchange of proposals shortly after the 2017 season concluded. Raiders officials commented after trading Mack to Chicago roughly a week ago that they never came close to bridging the gap with Mack.”
Based on La Canfora’s report and what the Raiders have acknowledged publicly through Jon Gruden and Reggie McKenzie, it sounds like the Raiders wanted to extend Mack’s contract with their initial offer or let him play out the final year of his rookie deal. There apparently wasn’t any middle ground.
What’s unique about Mack’s new deal is that two organizations were so far apart on his valuation. The Raiders didn’t want to give Mack $90 million guaranteed, but the Bears were willing pay the price and lose two first-round picks in the process.
twitter: @raidersbeat
It may have been cheaper , but we all know it the guaranteed money that matters. Raider fans also know before Gruden, McKenzie likes to back load contracts. Which is smart. Mack is the greatest in football today , yesterday proves it. But yesterday also proves QBs are the most important position in the NFL. WE AS FANS ,wanted Mack, Carr ,and anyone that can help our team win , there. The NFL is a is a game to fans, a business to players, coaches, agents and whoever else involved. So I’m sad to see the NFL paying 100s of millions to players as a fan I know this means value for the buck after the first 100 mill + player is signed. Just the way it is.
The rookie QB and quality players surrounding him seems to be the latest philosophy for success. The Bears seem to follow this philosophy, and the Raiders can not with a highly paid Carr and may not believe it in any case. If they do not then their valuation of Mack may not be that different from the Bears, but fear that paying such an amount would inhibit their idea of using the drafting with occasional forays into free agency so parted ways with Mack. Only time will tell if this new philosophy works in the long run.
I have a feeling despite Mack’s effort last night, “which was great” Mack is hurt goods. I know it didn’t seem that way last night because he had much time to heel however, let’s wait till after week 8 to see where his level is and until after the 2019 season to see if the two picks we got were worth it. I have a feeling in the long run it’s going to work out for us. One main reason, I don’t think Carr is our guy and those picks can make a difference for us.
Oh please! Khalil Mack is not “hurt goods” and is as fully “healed” as any player I’ve ever watched moving around a football field! Did you not watch last night’s performance? Did you shut your set off (as I’m fairly confident many of my fellow despondent Raider brethren did moments after he strip-sacked Hundley and (almost casually) recovered the ball himself! Mack hardly looked like anything remotely resembling “(damaged) goods” when he sprinted that pick 6 through a maze of Packers’ offensive players! (That pathetic shove from behind that Mack received from a visibly frustrated Davante Adams as he crossed the Packers’ goal line pretty much told the whole story)
I’m also not buying any of this recent nonsense about not being able to afford to simultaneously sign two high-profile marquis players to big-dollar extensions; that it’s somehow a given that teams need to have a starting quarterback on a rookie contract when inking another star player to a lucrative long-term extension. In fact, one need look no further than the Rams and their recent record-setting contract extensions with Todd Gurley and Aaron Donald to see that not only is it possible to negotiate two astronomical extensions in the same offseason, it is also conceivable to surround these two players with a supporting cast of star free agents and well-developed talent & depth within the framework and confines of the salary cap, provided that the latter is prudently managed and player contracts are intelligently structured to provide as much immediate cap relief as possible through signing bonuses and guaranteed money over the life of the agreement. Of course, this requires a GM with the acumen & experience to execute this otherwise seemingly unthinkable task, particularly in the NFL (the last remaining major professional sports league that still stubbornly refuses to fully guarantee it’s player contracts) with it’s mystifyingly naive fanbase that so often sides with billionaire owners while outspokenly vilifying players like Le’veon Bell (or even Mack himself for that matter) for holding out of OTAs & training camp (the lone negotiating tool available to these otherwise metaphorically emasculated players by an obscenely lopsided CBA which puts the overwhelming majority of power (and the lion’s share of profit) in the hands of ownership that the players’ union was effectively forced to sign off on in exchange for a token amount of money under imminent threat of being locked-out by the league for at least a full season of a career that typically spans little more than 10 years!).
Yet the Oakland Raiders have (or at least had) such a uniquely skilled GM in house who has proven himself capable of managing and manipulating the salary cap as well as or better than any other executive in the league! Reggie McKenzie not only demonstrated his ability to manage the salary cap in a fiscally responsible and creative manner, he was awarded the honour of 2016 ”NFL Executive of the Year” by The Sporting News for his Herculean efforts turning around a Raiders’ team in total disarray with millions in dead money on their books, transforming them in immediate terms from a 7-9 team that hadn’t made the playoffs in nearly 15 years to a 12-4 playoff contender (until Derek Carr broke his leg in Week 15), in other words if ANYONE could’ve pulled this off and gotten Mack signed to a lucrative extension, it was Reggie! So what does Mark Davis do? Why he goes out and seduces Jon Gruden with a pen unprecedented 10-year, $100 million contract and effectively hands him the keys to the franchise in the process!
Make no mistake about it, Jon Gruden was lying when he faced the media for the first time after idiotically sending the best defensive player in the league to the Bears, referring (in his inimitable “aw shucks” manner) to the stupidest trade in Raiders’ history as “a group decision”! This was Gruden and Gruden alone that made this fateful decision that stands to set the Raider organization back 10 years. Don’t believe this colossal lackwit’s words for a second as the evidence to the contrary is incontrovertible! Reggie McKenzie himself said on more than one occasion (and as recently as a few short weeks prior to this nightmarish turn of events) that he was planning to re-sign Mack, reassuring Raider fans to “not panic” and “not to worry…it’ll get done”. And had the task of negotiating & ultimately crafting an extension with Mack’s agent been left in his hands, Khalil Mack would still be an Oakland Raider…I guarantee it!
The Raiders have known for YEARS now that this day was coming yet this idiot is acting as though the team was somehow caught off-guard by the magnitude of the situation and had to make a quick “collective” decision about what should be done with Mack! Please! What SHOULD have been done was to lock this franchise centrepiece up on a long term deal before Derek Carr; certainly before Gabe Jackson was given his long term deal! (While I love Jackson, he’s without a doubt eminently more expendable than Khalil Mack!) . Had they made Mack more of a priority, he would have been signed to a comparatively cheap extension by now, certainly a lot less expensive than the astronomical one he just signed with the Bears! Even if the Raiders had met Mack halfway, they would have signed him to a relatively “team friendly” deal rather than waiting for the terms of Aaron Donald’s last-minute extension to become a matter of public record and then suddenly being “left with little alternative” other than to entertain trade offers from other teams, transparently hiding behind the ludicrous notion that they somehow “couldn’t afford to pay him what the Bears were offering”! Bullshit…plain & simple! It doesn’t take a genius to see that the Raiders were sitting back waiting to create the illusion that they had been priced out of the market!
What pisses me off more than anything is that the Raiders FINALLY appeared to have secured some actual help for Mack on the defensive line in the form of 5th Round draft steal Maurice Hurst. With the Raiders poised to create some actual pressure on opposing quarterbacks up the middle from the 3-technique DT position, Mack was set to double (or possibly even triple) his sack output & QB pressures from last season! Instead what does Chucky elect to do at this pivotal juncture? Why trade him away of course! Sigh….
Jon Gruden has no business making personnel decisions p, particularly in addition to his responsibilities as a head coach; if his post-Super Bowl track record in Tampa Bay (which eventually cost him his job) wasn’t sufficient proof of his incompetence as a GM, this latest I’ll-conceived, ego-motivated and historically stupid decision to get rid of a generational talent like Khalil Mack (for ANY price) should leave little doubt in even the feeblest of minds that Gruden needs to relinquish any and all involvement in player personnel matters…period!