Players shocked by trade of Mack
Raiders trying to come to terms with departure
Raiders quarterback Derek Carr said he’d just awoken Saturday morning when he learned the team had traded edge rusher Khalil Mack and aired his reaction in a twoword tweet: “No way,” Carr wrote. Mack and Carr were the Raiders’ top two picks in a 2014 draft class that helped take the team to its first playoff appearance in 14 seasons in 2016. They are also close friends, and though they remained in touch during Mack’s contract holdout, Carr said Monday he hadn’t expected Mack to be traded.
“No, never,” Carr said. “Completely honest, I don’t think anybody did, top-down here. It’s not what anybody wanted. I think that’s clear.
“But it is what it is. It’s part of the business. It’s one of those sucky things. The hardest part for me is, obviously, you lose a good football player, but he’s my brother, man. He’s one of my best friends.”
Mack, the 2016 Defensive Player of the Year, was a popular figure and a leader in the Raiders’ locker room. His
departure came as a surprise to many former teammates.
“Shocked,” defensive tackle Justin Ellis said. “A lot of people know how close we are. So a lot of people were texting me, calling me like, ‘Say it ain’t true.’ But it was true.”
The Raiders dealt Mack and two picks in the 2020 draft (second round and a conditional fifth) to the Bears for first-round picks in 2019 and 2020, a sixth-round pick in 2019 and a third-round pick in 2020. Chicago then signed Mack, 27, to a reported sixyear, $141 million contract extension with $90 million guaranteed, making him the NFL’s highest-paid defensive player.
“It was a surprise,” defensive end Fadol Brown said. “But in the end, he got what he deserved. And I just wish the best for him. That’s my guy.”
Mack held out all offseason for a long-term extension from the Raiders, who made an initial offer in February that head coach Jon Gruden said Sunday was not “anywhere close” to what Mack eventually got from the Bears. Gruden said the Raiders last weekend believed Mack was “not going to report anytime soon” and that “something had to happen” to end their standoff.
The move came just as the Raiders were starting preparations for Monday’s season opener against the Rams. Carr said he initially worried how the team would react to Mack being traded, but that after talking with teammates the past two days: “I don’t have any concerns now.”
Carr said Gruden addressed the Raiders’ players, who returned to practice Monday, about the trade and “invited anyone who needed to talk to him, open-door.” Even with Mack’s status, because of the heavy turnover on the Raiders this offseason, less than half the current roster played with Mack last season.
“It’s one of those situations that sucks — we lost our friend, we lost our brother,” Carr said. “But we have games to win. We have a job to do.”
The situation was different for Carr, and not just because of his friendship with Mack. Carr last year signed a fiveyear, $125 million extension, and Gruden said Sunday that giving a comparable deal to Mack would have limited the Raiders’ ability to sign players.
Before trading Mack, the Raiders also reached longterm deals with other members of the 2014 class, right guard Gabe Jackson (five years, $56 million) and Ellis (three years, $15 million).
“I think that’s what makes it hard,” Carr said. “Me, Gabe, Khalil, Jelly, we all saw it coming. It’s one of those things that you just hope can work out. And we all did our best, I’ll say it that way, we all did our best to make sure it could. And it just didn’t work out that way.”
Mack and Carr shared the ignominy of an 0-10 start as rookies and, two years later, led the Raiders to a 12-win season darkened by Carr’s leg injury in Week 16 that derailed their playoff hopes. They are still chasing a return to the postseason, only now from different sides.
“It’s weird,” Carr said. “When we first came in, we planned the next 10 to 15 years of our life sitting at the same lockers. And I think that’s the weirdest part, is that it’s a little bit of a different chapter now.
“But I felt like when we showed up here, we wanted to change the culture and show people what it meant to work. And I think we did that. … I think we did change the dynamic of how things are done from the people in the locker room. I believe 100 percent that we changed that. It makes it feel a little bit better, knowing that we accomplished that together.”