I can imagine Jon Gruden has been preparing for this speech for several weeks, because Gruden knows it’ll be the most significant address of his second tenure with the team.
It had better be an all-timer.
I can imagine that Gruden will walk into a big meeting room (probably on Sunday, because the players have today off), with all of his players assembled, and he will be direct, forceful and passionate.
I can believe that Gruden will throw himself into trying to convince his players that he had to trade Khalil Mack for the good of the team, that he has a clear and precise plan for them this season and into the future, and that the franchise has every intention to reward everybody in that locker room who deserves it.
But I’m not sure if his players will buy most or any of this. I’m not sure they should buy most or any of it. I believe the entire organization is still in shock after hearing that the Raiders had agreed to trade Mack to the Bears for a package including two first-round picks, and I don’t believe this will wear off for quite some time.
With their opener coming up in eight days.
Because these players — and everybody involved with the Raiders — have every right to ask four large questions right now, right to Gruden, and to anybody running the Raiders:
1) How can trading the best player on the team, in the middle of his prime at 27, help this team win now and into the near future?
You’re supposed to keep and cherish Hall of Fame-level players, not run them off the moment they ask for market-rate deals.
2) If Raiders management decided Mack wasn’t the right fit now, or that there wasn’t a way to sign him, why couldn’t the Raiders have figured that out back in April, before the NFL Draft — when they knew the draft order and could’ve immediately landed one or two players to help them in 2018?
Instead, the Raiders agreed to deal Mack just days before the start of the regular season and landed draft picks that won’t arrive until 2019 at the earliest.
The timing of this just screams miscommunication, crossed signals and an impulsive decision. Which is not how you usually build long-term success or a great roster.
If they didn’t know that Mack was fully intent on playing this out, at least a little while longer, that’s a total failure of planning and interpretation. There was no communication, and even in the middle of a holdout, you must have communication with your most talented player.
3) If Gruden is the one deciding all of this, and it cannot be anybody else, what does that say about general manager Reggie McKenzie and all of the players he has accumulated over the years?
4) Why was Mack too expensive to keep when Gruden himself got a record-smashing $100 million deal to come to the Raiders only a few months ago?
These are tough questions. I believe Gruden has some decent answers for most of them — as I’ve written here or there, with Derek Carr already signed up to $25 million per, it would be hard for any team to pay a mega deal to another player, and obviously Mack was going to accept nothing less than a mega deal.
And getting two first-rounders while you’re freeing up that much money … well, there’s an argument to be made for the logic of it. I think any team would consider trading away almost any of its players for two great draft picks.
But try selling that to the 53 players on the Raiders roster now. Try telling them that the best thing for the Raiders was to separate themselves from one of the most dominant talents in the league. Try arguing that the Raiders and Gruden will take care of them if they perform — when they offloaded Mack the moment they felt he was too expensive.
Try saying the Raiders will be better right now, starting next Monday night against the Rams.
Of course, football players, like most humans, are guided by results. If the Raiders win some games early in the season, I think the locker room will be steadied and they’ll remain mostly confident in Gruden’s leadership.
But if they lose early, maybe particularly if they lose them while the defense gets shredded by opposing quarterbacks who aren’t getting pressured by any real Raiders pass rush … well … I cannot imagine the mood will be tremendously bright in there.
And I cannot believe that McKenzie and his personnel staff will feel wonderful about everything or that there will be any cohesive personnel plan.
So, maybe on purpose, Gruden has thrown the whole 2018 season into tumult. Maybe he wants to see how people will react. Maybe he wants to know which players have his back and which ones are already ready to bolt.
But this is an incredibly risky way to do it. I thought the Raiders were playing it out this long with Mack because they figured they could get him in on a short-term deal, or just on his current $13.8 million salary, and they were willing to stare him down to get him in.
So what happened? The Raiders just realized he wasn’t coming in? How could they go this far without knowing this? That’s a failure, right there.
Generally, maybe Gruden didn’t take a liking to the situation, or to Mack’s approach to this, or to whatever. But this decision feels haphazard. It seems like an impatient move made precisely when the Raiders mostly needed to project patience and benevolence toward a player who performed so well for them. It feels like something Gruden should’ve settled months ago, not on Sept. 1.
Perhaps it took Gruden this long to push this through. Maybe he just had other things he had to do first, before he got to this. Maybe Gruden listened to McKenzie and Mark Davis on this situation … until he decided he had to step in, take over and get Mack off the roster.
But now every player on the roster has to wonder what the plan is and when Gruden might decide to dump each one of them. Unless he convinces them otherwise, and convinces them that trading Khalil Mack was the best thing for the franchise. They will be all ears.
