I don't think we give Al Davis enough credit.. Or maybe it isn't Al Davis.
Somehow the Raider managed to not only keep us reading about the Raiders all offseason with the Kiffin job related drama, but they also managed to get the player agents calling Oakland before anywhere else.
Al Davis has manipulated the system to work like he wants it to. Here is what we have done and how it impacts the league.
0. The Lane drama. Ever heard that no publicity is bad publicity? We had every free agents thinking about Oakland. Dysfunction, mystery, hogwash, whatever the FA players thought of it didn't matter, our name was out there.
1. Sign Fargas: Impact on the league is no one thought we were going to think about McFadden because of the signing, but in the fine print of Fargas contract you see that he could be cut after this year with no cap hit. That is a disguised deal.
2. Exclusive Tag for Asomugha. We said hands off league, we knew we were going to make the prices jump and we made sure no one tried to take our prized CB.
3. Kelly top paid DT. We wanted him and the market was going to give him a huge deal, so we went ahead and made headlines with a monster deal that drove up prices everywhere and immediately made Player Agents call Oakland first. This is often the hardest thing to get Agents to do is a call, but when players see dollar signs. They tell there agents to call the money first.
4. Results: Gibril Wilson sees how much cash we are giving out and decides he might want to come home and play and we get a deal done. If we land Berrian, which I don't really like, we would have landed the top S (Wilson), top DT (Kelly), top CB (Aso) and top WR (Berrian) available in such a crazy market. Granted two of them were our players, but we secured them. We also drove up the price for free agents and maybe even drove up the price for a stud player in the draft, making our trade value to move down in the draft stronger should we decide to do that.
5. Maybe it was by accident. Doesn't matter. We may have just made the entire league look foolish. We basically schooled them all. Welcome to a new generation of Raider football!
PS - I am in Texas and about 2 miles from the facility where McFadden trained to run that 4.33 (4.27). If I happen to bump into any of them still training when I go the the gym tomorrow I'll be sure to ask them some questions about the Raiders. My fiance said they were in there all the time before the combine. McFadden was unofficially dating a fellow intern of hers but broke it off when she found out he had two kids on the way. Funny stuff.
Somehow the Raider managed to not only keep us reading about the Raiders all offseason with the Kiffin job related drama, but they also managed to get the player agents calling Oakland before anywhere else.
Al Davis has manipulated the system to work like he wants it to. Here is what we have done and how it impacts the league.
0. The Lane drama. Ever heard that no publicity is bad publicity? We had every free agents thinking about Oakland. Dysfunction, mystery, hogwash, whatever the FA players thought of it didn't matter, our name was out there.
1. Sign Fargas: Impact on the league is no one thought we were going to think about McFadden because of the signing, but in the fine print of Fargas contract you see that he could be cut after this year with no cap hit. That is a disguised deal.
2. Exclusive Tag for Asomugha. We said hands off league, we knew we were going to make the prices jump and we made sure no one tried to take our prized CB.
3. Kelly top paid DT. We wanted him and the market was going to give him a huge deal, so we went ahead and made headlines with a monster deal that drove up prices everywhere and immediately made Player Agents call Oakland first. This is often the hardest thing to get Agents to do is a call, but when players see dollar signs. They tell there agents to call the money first.
4. Results: Gibril Wilson sees how much cash we are giving out and decides he might want to come home and play and we get a deal done. If we land Berrian, which I don't really like, we would have landed the top S (Wilson), top DT (Kelly), top CB (Aso) and top WR (Berrian) available in such a crazy market. Granted two of them were our players, but we secured them. We also drove up the price for free agents and maybe even drove up the price for a stud player in the draft, making our trade value to move down in the draft stronger should we decide to do that.
5. Maybe it was by accident. Doesn't matter. We may have just made the entire league look foolish. We basically schooled them all. Welcome to a new generation of Raider football!
PS - I am in Texas and about 2 miles from the facility where McFadden trained to run that 4.33 (4.27). If I happen to bump into any of them still training when I go the the gym tomorrow I'll be sure to ask them some questions about the Raiders. My fiance said they were in there all the time before the combine. McFadden was unofficially dating a fellow intern of hers but broke it off when she found out he had two kids on the way. Funny stuff.
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