Raiders owner Mark Davis is taking the blame. Which is nice of him considering the shambles his team is at the moment is almost exclusively his fault.
Davis sat down with Paul Gutierrez of ESPN.com after last night’s loss to the Chargers, which dropped them to 1-8 and would be a much bigger deal if not for the actual tragedies happening in California right now.
“I always look in the mirror, and the buck stops with me,” Davis said. “Where this team is right now is my fault. We haven’t been able to build a 22-man roster. We haven’t been able to give this team a chance to win because the reconstruction failed. We failed from 2014 on to have a roster right now.”
Davis has referred to a “deconstruction/reconstruction” program that started in 2012 after the death of his father Al Davis. It took a bit to start since they foolishly traded away first- and second-round picks to get Carson Palmer in 2011, but then bounced back with the 2014 and 2015 drafts which brought Derek Carr, Khalil Mack, Gabe Jackson, and Amari Cooper.
But the recent trade of Mack to the Bears for future picks made it clear they think a major rebuild is in order under Gruden, who clearly has more sway over decisions than General Manager Reggie McKenize.
“Having Jon Gruden here was the end game for me,” Davis said of the guy he gave a 10-year contract to. “Jon’s going to be the stability here. Jon’s going nowhere. That’s just the way it is.”
When that stability might come is another question.
“It’s been all part of an evolution, but I think it’s becoming clearer and clearer to Jon as well that the talent is just not here at this time,” Davis said. “The drafts did not help supplement what we were doing in the free-agent market. If you look at our roster now, it’s a bunch of free-agent one-year guys that are mercenaries. And they’re great guys and they’re Raiders. Once a Raider, always a Raider, . . .but we just don’t have the overall talent of a 22-man roster. . . .
That’s a clear shot at McKenzie, whose good work was picked apart by the Mack deal. Only 11 of his 50 draft picks from 2012 to 2017 remain on the roster.
“Reggie and I need to sit down and talk and figure out how we are going to go about the future,” Davis said. “We’ve got to look in the mirror and figure out, Where the hell did we go wrong in trying to build this thing?
“We failed. I have failed. But at the same time, we wouldn’t have been in the great position we were in without Reggie McKenzie being here.”
The one constant in the failure is ownership, and Davis is right to admit that much.