Heck, if I had known this was an option, I would have never been on board with the Carson thing.
If the league moves Chargers/Rams to LA, and throw a bone to Oakland, and help get a new stadium in OAK, that sounds pretty great to me.
It might be better financially for Mark Davis if he was in LA, but what do we care? More money clearly doesn't provide an advantage on the field, as Kroenke and Jerry Jones have proven.
If the NFL, as a consolation prize for the Raiders, helps get a new stadium........well heck, you can keep LA.
Perhaps, but not having enough is clearly a disadvantage. Much has been made about the Raiders' lack of cash flow from crappy stadium revenues and the impact on how they have had to structure FA contracts. Not having cash to offer signing bonus and instead having to load it into salary limits the FA that we can attract. Reggie has been successful turning that into a perception of being conservative with managing potential dead money, but at some point we're going to have to start pumping out competitive contracts to get solid talents. I'm not wanting us to pump out Suh-level contracts, but we need to improve depth top to bottom. Penn and Hudson are great, but we need to be bringing in 2-3 guys at those positions each year to compete and improve depth. Our secondary is the epitome of this. We have to sign stiffs like Taylor Mays and rely on 38 year olds past their time* because we're not bringing in baseline talent.
*I love Woodson, don't get me wrong, and he played like a warrior at times, but he was also bad bad bad at times. It was hard to watch a guy giving so much, knowing it's not enough, but knowing it's better than the alternatives we would have to trot out otherwise.
I think pointing to the secondary is cherry-picking a little bit.
I have not read anywhere that players didn't want to sign because there wasn't enough up front money. The Raiders are not the only team to structure their contracts in this manner, most teams with strong front offices are doing this, you can look at the contracts for Dalton and Kaepernick, and more and more teams are placing a lot of money in first few years, or guaranteeing 2nd year salary, as opposed to paying massive signing bonuses. The massive signing bonuses are antiquated. Teams have been burned too much. If Oakland cannot come up with enough cash to
keep their good players. then we have a real concern. Cincinnati has been tight with free agent deals and they have one of the top rosters in the league. They've taken on some questionable characters, but as an example, they let Michael Johnson walk, which was the right move.
I feel confident in saying that players were a lot more hesitant to sign because they didn't trust the team to be competitive. Build good team, and good players with the right priorities will come.
Priorities is the right word. If we cannot get players because they go somewhere less competitive for slightly more money, those probably aren't the players we will win with.
It's also time for my
annual tale of caution about free agency
. The top tier free agents are rarely worth it. The 2nd tier is where we have made improvement to the team (aside from the draft) and we should expect, and embrace that philosophy again. One or two big ticket items, because we have the cash, and several solid vets that don't make 10 mill a year. Everyone knows this, everyone says so at the end of the year.
Not worth the money, based on 2015 production: Suh, Cobb, Murray (three players we all would have done backflips if we had signed, myself included), Charles Clay, and on and on. You can set your watch by free agent disappointments.
It's a Raiders town now and always will be.
