The Oakland Raiders have traded away their best defensive player and arguably their biggest playmaker on offense since they hired Jon Gruden last offseason, but team owner Mark Davis remains optimistic about the future.
Khalil Mack has continued to harass opposing quarterbacks while wearing a Chicago Bears uniform, while wide receiver Amari Cooper has awoken from the dead now that he is playing for the playoff contending Dallas Cowboys. When asked about the trades, Davis had a funny response.
“But we’re doing a good job of getting ourselves a high pick,” he told Ian Rapoport of NFL Network this week.
While Mack and Cooper are thriving with their new teams, the deals can’t really be graded from Oakland’s perspective until we see what they do with the draft picks they acquired. Davis did admit, however, that he has watched what his former players are accomplishing.
“Of course you watch it and everything but you don’t have any control over what the other team is doing unless you play them,” he said. “We’re not playing the Bears and we’re not playing the Cowboys.”
There’s no denying that the Raiders are loaded with draft capital. They have three first-round picks in the 2019 draft, and their own will be quite high, as Davis alluded to. Still, he said he has watched Cooper with the Cowboys and hinted that the receiver may not have gotten enough deep balls in Oakland.
“In the future, we might be saying, ‘Damn!'” Davis said of the Cooper trade.
The recent move the Raiders made in their organization proves that they are all-in on Gruden. Depending on how the team does in the draft over the next two years, the trades could look anywhere from disastrous to genius.
