Gruden says stalled talks necessitated Mack deal
On July 20, head coach Jon Gruden stood before a crowd of Raiders fans at an event in San Leandro and said: “We’re going to find a way to get Khalil Mack back” from a prolonged contract holdout.
On Sunday, Gruden sat before reporters at the Raiders’ facility in Alameda and fielded questions about the team’s decision to trade Mack, the 2016 Defensive Player of the Year, to Chicago a day earlier.
“It’s tough,” Gruden said. “It wasn’t my goal to trade Khalil when we got here. One of the reasons I’m here is because of him. Unfortunately, we had a standoff with the contract. And we could not come to terms. The Bears made us an offer of two first-round draft choices. And here we are today.”
The Raiders dealt Mack, a 2020 second-round draft pick
and a 2020 conditional fifthround pick to the Bears in exchange for first-round picks in 2019 and 2020, a 2019 sixthround pick and a 2020 thirdround pick. Chicago then signed Mack to a reported six-year, $141 million contract extension, making him the NFL’s highest-paid defensive player.
Raiders general manager Reggie McKenzie said Saturday the Raiders had made an offer to Mack of a long-term deal in March but “weren’t close” to the numbers in a counteroffer delivered by Mack’s camp. Gruden echoed that.
“We made an offer,” Gruden said. “I don’t believe we were anywhere close to where the Bears were.”
Mack, 27, was under contract for 2018 via a fifth-year option the Raiders exercised last season. Gruden was asked whether the Raiders considered waiting for Mack to report and continuing negotiations.
“We have waited,” Gruden said. “We waited and waited. And the Rams game was looming. Our feeling was he was not going to report anytime soon.
“You can wait it out, you can franchise (tag) him, you can force him to play. But we made a decision, and we’re going to stand by it.”
Like McKenzie, Gruden declined to get into specifics about the Raiders’ negotiations with Mack, including how their initial offer compared to what Mack eventually got from the Bears. Gruden also said he “wasn’t really involved” in the decision to send a secondround pick to Chicago in the deal.
“I know there was maybe some feeling I was involved in day-to-day negotiation,” Gruden said. “I had nothing to do with it. We were at a standoff. And something had to happen.”
Unlike McKenzie, Gruden indicated the mega-deal reached by the Rams and defensive tackle Aaron Donald on Friday did have an impact on the Raiders and Mack. The Rams signed Donald to a reported six-year, $135 million extension that included $87 million guaranteed. Mack reportedly received $90 million guaranteed from the Bears.
McKenzie said the size of Donald’s deal was not a “motivating factor” in trading Mack. Gruden, though, said Donald’s deal “pretty much set the stage” of what it would take to keep Mack.
“Ninety million guaranteed is an astronomical number,” Gruden said. “It’s phenomenal, I think, for the players, great for (Mack) obviously. But that was something we could not do.”
Asked about the impact of already having quarterback Derek Carr on a five-year, $125 million contract, Gruden also differed from McKenzie by saying there were “implications of having two players making that much money,” in that it could limit the Raiders’ future ability to sign players. However, Gruden bristled at a question about perceptions that he and McKenzie disagreed on trading Mack.
“They’re trying to divide us,” Gruden said. “People are trying to divide us: ‘I wanted him gone, he wanted him here.’ We made a decision as an organization.”
It was a decision that surprised, among others, Mack — who at a news conference in Chicago on Sunday told reporters that the trade stunned him.
“I was definitely shocked,” Mack said. “But you don’t have time to be shocked for long. It’s kind of like, ‘Oh, word? OK. What time’s the flight?”
Mack, the fifth overall pick in 2014, made three Pro Bowls and totaled 40.5 sacks in four seasons with Oakland. He said he didn’t expect to be traded until it happened and described the process as a “whirlwind.”
At one point, Mack was asked what made the Bears an appealing destination.
“To be wanted,” Mack said. “That’s all it takes. It’s just that feeling that they’re excited to have you.”
Gruden said he expects the Raiders will “be secondguessed until the cows come home” about the trade. He also said: “We have to build this football team. We have a lot of needs, and we’ll address them as we see fit.”
“We are sorry to see (Mack) go,” Gruden said. “We wish him the best. We’ll obviously have to do right with the picks that we did acquire. And the players on this roster have got to step up.”