The trick to being an Oakland Raider long has been based on one of two principles-- loving the Raiders for all their faults, or getting more money than any other team would offer.
I think we now know where Khalil Mack stands. As for why the Raiders are letting him stand there . . . well, that’s another question.
Mack remains firm in his intention to stay out of Raidervania until he gets the contract he (and most others in the football diaspora) believes he should have, and the Raiders remain firm that he should not have it. It’s the second part that makes no sense, and now it is fast approaching the point of no return.
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Not that he won’t ever sign a deal that allows him to play this year. That bridge, we believe, has not yet been burned. But the idea that Mack can be a Raider to his marrow is pretty much done. He has seen the business of football too closely to ever again fall for that love-of-game-love-of-team song and dance.
Nothing is more a staple of the football prayer book than unwavering loyalty to the cause -- that is until a player sees that the people who define “the cause” have no such compunctions. Once that player sees the idea of paying the debt to the greater whole only works employee-to-employer, an attitudinal shift occurs, and suddenly all teams essentially are the same.
That is, unless it is a team that has had as little success over the last two decades as Oakland. The fact is, the Raiders need Khalil Mack more than he needs them, and for reasons beyond play. He represents what the Raiders want to be now and in Nevada, and what they want to show to both their current and future fan bases. He is, in short, as important to the Raiders’ future as Derek Carr.
And what Mack wants in return is to be paid within 20 percent of that, which seems perfectly prudent and sensible. That the Raiders don’t see it is, well, baffling.
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Now maybe they think Mack isn’t all that for as long as his contract demands insist he is, in which case the Raiders should trade him yesterday and be done with the problem. Maybe they think he’s disrupting the whole Jon Gruden-Face-O’-The-Franchise vibe, which is a level of foolishness we find hard to comprehend. Or maybe they really are that cash-strapped, in which case Mark Davis might as well put a For Sale sign out on the lawn.
But on the greater likelihood that the Raiders have a salary structure that they are unwilling to bend for Khalil Mack, they have lost sight of the main goal of a football team, namely, football. Mack’s value is that he can’t be replaced by anyone or anything remotely as valuable, and everyone who follows football knows it. So assuming the Raiders know it, too, their intransigence sends a message to all current and future Raiders that the football isn’t the most important thing, and that’s a message that never dissipates even as the team’s relevance would.
Thus, we enter the third weekend of the preseason with the Raiders no closer to doing the obvious thing than they were back in March. This is not a good sign at a fairly critical time for the franchise in its two home states.
But it’s not like they haven’t been there before. Again, and again, again.