I have a confession: Unlike the rest of the NFL world, I did not hate the Raiders trading Khalil Mack. In fact, I thought it was a smart move that will pay dividends down the road.
Let me explain my thinking: We tend to criticize teams for over-paying supposed franchise quarterbacks who are incapable of carrying an offense to respectability. You know, the Andy Daltons and Joe Flaccos of the NFL. Obviously Mack is a better linebacker than Dalton and Flacco are quarterbacks – the 27-year-old is arguably the second best defensive player behind Aaron Donald – but like those two mediocre signal-callers, he is not capable of carrying a unit to competence without a lot of help, like true franchise quarterbacks are.
Mack has been one of the NFL’s most brilliant defensive players since entering the league in 2014. Here are the Raiders’ defensive ranks over that time: 21st, 22nd, 26th, 23rd. Of course it’s not Mack’s fault the Raiders have been a bad defensively. He’s done his job at a high level. It just shows that even a great defensive player has a limited impact on his team’s success. You need several great pieces to put together a good defense. With one player accounting for a significant portion of the cap, it’s much harder to aquire those pieces.
Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Jon Gruden was mocked for saying the Raiders defense was bad even with Mack on the field, but, I believe, that was the point he was trying to make. You can call Mack a transcendent player worth building around all you want, but history shows that sort of player does not exist on the defensive side of the ball. You build around a great defensive core; not a great player.
Mack wanted to be paid like a transcendent player, and the Raiders were smart to not give in and the trade allowed them to get something in return for the years spent developing him. Sure, there’s no guarantee the first-round picks will turn into good players. And we don’t know if the front office will wisely invest the $23.5 million per year it saved by shipping Mack to Chicago. But we do know this: NFL teams that have paid defensive players “quarterback money” have had a hard time building good defenses around them.
Even teams paying quarterbacks that much money have found it difficult to build a winner. Once Mack’s extension kicks in next season, he will be making around 11% of the team’s cap. Only four quarterbacks have won a Super Bowl while accounting for at least 11% of their team’s cap room. They are Steven Young, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning (twice) and Eli Manning. That’s three hall of famers and the quarterback of a 9-7 wild card team that got hot in January – not the best model for team-building.
* 2010 was an uncapped year. The percentage is based on the Packers' team payroll.
As good as Mack is, he’s not giving a team “Hall of Fame quarterback” production.
Now, that doesn’t mean the Bears are losers in this swap. While I wouldn’t have given a linebacker $90 million guaranteed, I would be more inclined to do so if I had a quarterback on a rookie contract, as Chicago does with Mitch Trubisky. The Bears are aping the model the Eagles used to build their Super Bowl-winning team, which is similar to the model the Rams are using now: Splurge on other pieces before you have to shell out a nine-figure contract to your quarterback.
Unfortunately for the Raiders, they had already taken that plunge when they decided to pay Derek Carr a bunch of money last offseason. Chicago is still three years away from having to give Trubisky a cap-crippling deal, so in the meantime … wheeeeeeeeeee!!!!
The Bears are taking a huge financial risk by investing so much guaranteed money in one asset, but GM Ryan Pace’s job security isn’t tied to how well Mack plays, now is it? It’s tied to Trubisky, for whom Pace also traded a cache of draft picks. If the 2017 first-round pick doesn’t perform like a franchise quarterback, the Bears won’t be a playoff team and Pace is getting fired anyway. If he does, Mack could be the piece that gets them over the hump. And if Trubisky performs at an MVP level, as Carson Wentz did for the Eagles before tearing his ACL, the Bears could very well be Super Bowl contenders. That makes this a risk worth taking.
Mike DiNovo-USA TODAY Sports
Mike DiNovo-USA TODAY Sports
The same could not be said for the Raiders. Even if Carr rebounded in 2018 and Mack continued to play at a high level, the roster would have still had too many holes to fill with not enough cap space to fill them. The Raiders are, at the very least, a year or two away from contending for a championship, and it’s going to take some stellar drafts for that to happen. And, because the NFL Draft is a lottery, the best way to win it is to have as many tickets as possible. That’s where those two first-rounders will come in handy.
Oakland isn’t just going to find another Khalil Mack – though the 2019 draft class is deep with pass rushers – but it now has the resources to replace him by committee while still having enough left over to strengthen the team in other areas. That wouldn’t have been the case if the Raiders gave in to his demands.
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