“We’re doing everything we can to win games and certainly build this football team. Not everybody, I’m sure, understands. I just to say those two things. We’re doing what we think is best for the Oakland Raiders and the future of the Raiders.”
-- Jon Gruden, Lord Of The Manor
Of all the things he has said in nearly 10 months as de facto general manager and de jure coach of the Raiders, it is this one sentence, uttered Wednesday during his damage acknowledgement presser that is most difficult for him to reconcile, and though Gruden has never been one to shy away from the truth when it suits him, this can’t be reconciled for one very basic reason.
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He must hurt the first team to serve the second team because they are indeed two separate entities.
"The Oakland Raiders" are what you have now. It was what you had before the Amari Cooper trade and before that the Khalil Mack trade and before that the systematic gutting of the 2016 team that overachieved its way to 12 wins. "The Raiders" are what Gruden has for nine more years, an ongoing concern that will last beyond 2019 and the move to Las Vegas and the rest of his seemingly interminable contract.
And the two teams are archrivals, working in lockstep against each other every day, in the locker room, in the upstairs offices, in the post office -- everywhere you find The Oakland Raiders, you will also find The Raiders. They are binary dwarf stars, one of which must devour the other. Anything that helps the one punishes the other, and vice versa.
Gruden is no fool. He knows this. That’s why he referred to the two entities as two entities on Wednesday. He knows what you’re seeing, and knows what you’re thinking, and like all coaches in every sport ever, he cares almost not at all about either.
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He cannot do his best for The Oakland Raiders and The Raiders at the same time, and in truth he has no intention of trying. He picked his side the day he signed his contract, even though the process of dismantling the Oakland Raiders this soon may not have dawned on him as early as January. When asked Wednesday when the initial plan became the revised plan, he dismissively said, “I’m not going to get into all that.” He didn’t have to, because the difference between changing his mind in January and April and June and September is of no real consequence. The question needed asking, but as Gruden showed with his contemptuous response, it didn’t need answering.
The point is, he stopped working for The Oakland Raiders awhile ago to concentrate on The Raiders because he felt he had to, and it is hard to fault his choice based on pragmatism. He might have been better off saying, “Sorry, kids, but I work for the logo, not the address. Your concerns are just not mine.” He wouldn’t sound quite so disingenuous.
But honesty never pays in sport-for-money because you never know when a new master of your time and attention may arise. Besides, one of the reasons Gruden was hired was so that Mark Davis’ passage from Oakland to Las Vegas would not be quite so difficult. It mattered to Mark that Gruden be loved here as he was when he tilted with Mark’s father Al 20 years ago, just as it mattered that they brought Marshawn Lynch out of retirement, and just as it mattered when they drafted and then paid Derek Carr. It also mattered that Mark could stick a finger in his father’s metaphorical eye for trading Gruden 17 years ago, but that’s a story for another time.
But it hasn’t worked, which is also a metaphor for most of Oakland Raiders 2.0. A team with four winning seasons in 24 years knows what happens when fate intervenes bearing a serious mad-on. No good deed goes unpunished, and no foolish deed goes unmocked.
And so it is with The Oakland Raiders v. The Raiders. Jon Gruden knew enough to try to jumpstart the future because he decided there was nothing left in the past, and the Oakland audience has nothing but past now, which is why they’re so damned angry about it. The guy they thought was working for them back in January is working for the other side, and now they know their side can’t win.
But at least they understand that there are two teams now, the Oakland Raiders and the Raiders, and that Jon Gruden admitted as much Wednesday. He just didn’t take the last step -- to admit that he can’t work for both.