Oakland Raiders: Giving McKenzie Credit Where Credit Is Due
By Kevin Saito
If you’ve been a fan of the Oakland Raiders for any length of time – especially over the last decade or so – chances are, you’ve been pretty upset/disgruntled/frustrated at one point or another. Perhaps you’ve even wanted to tear your hair out, scream to the heavens, or just punch a wall. All of those reactions are not only understandable, but probably warranted to. Sometimes, it’s just not that easy to be a Raider fan.
And when there is such frustration in the streets, the need to pin the blame on somebody always exists. For a good, long while, the state of the Raiders – and the overwhelming lack of success – was pinned squarely on the shoulders of late owner Al Davis. And rightly so.
And ever since Reggie McKenzie took over the GM’s chair in 2012, the losing has continued, and he has become the favorite pinata of many Raider fans around the world. But the truth of the matter is that McKenzie, though he’s made some mistakes along the way, isn’t getting nearly the credit he absolutely deserves.
After the Raiders were destroyed in Super Bowl XXXVII, Davis made more than a few mind boggling roster moves, handed out bloated contracts to players who were great – five years before Davis signed them – and he drafted incredibly poorly. Fabian Washington, JaMarcus Russell, or Darrius Heyward-Bey ring any bells out there?
Though he made some absolutely horrible roster decisions, Davis was doing all he thought he could to restore his team to greatness and glory. There was little more in his life that Davis loved more than the Raiders. And though he really made a hash of things toward the end of his days, it can at least be said that he did what he thought was the best interest of the team he loved with every fiber of his being.
Not that it ever did much for the on field product.
After his passing in 2011, Mark Davis hired Reggie McKenzie to be the team’s general manager – a position the elder Davis had controlled since 1966. And with McKenzie’s hiring, the Raider faithful had a new target for all of the frustration and scorn over the consistent losing that had been accumulating for a decade at that point.
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McKenzie didn’t make a lot of friends among the Raider faithful when one of his first acts upon taking the GM job was to fire HC Hue Jackson – one of only two coaches to post a non-losing record (8-8) since the 2003 season. Jackson and the Raiders very narrowly missed the playoffs in 2011, which made him a pretty popular guy with the Raider faithful.
As bad as firing Jackson looked for McKenzie, hiring a man with zero head coaching experience and the personality of wallpaper, Dennis Allen, was even worse. In a little more than two seasons on the job, Allen guided the Raiders to an absolutely dismal 8-32 record, going 0-4 to start the 2014 campaign which earned a pink slip, a one way ticket out of town, and the eternal derision of Raider fans everywhere.
Sep 30, 2014; Alameda, CA, USA; Oakland Raiders general manager Reggie McKenzie during a press conference to introduce Tony Sparano (not pictured) as Raiders interim coach at the Raiders practice facility. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
The calls for McKenzie’s head – which honestly began with the firing of Jackson – only multiplied and intensified and as the Raiders not only continued to lose, but looked terrible doing it.
But something funny happened last season. Despite an 0-10 start to the year, the Raiders went on to win three of their final six games. Oakland, with nothing at all to play for, stuck a dagger into the playoff hearts of the Buffalo Bills, San Francisco 49ers, and the Kansas City Chiefs.
And though it was only three wins, it was three quality wins. And in the process of winning that small handful of games, you could feel something shifting within the organization. Though some may scoff at the notion, you could absolutely see that the team was beginning to turn a corner.
In those three wins last season, you could see that some of McKenzie’s plans, some of the things he’d been doing to help right the ship in Oakland were beginning to come to fruition. And despite the long, loud, and lusty cries to the contrary, it started to look like McKenzie actually did know what he was doing.
McKenzie has no shortage of detractors and people who would rather see him working for another organization – or at their local McDonald’s. And some of the anger and vitriol that is directed at him is understandable – as well as self inflicted. The Oakland gig is McKenzie’s first shot as a GM in the league, and as he’s grown into the position, he’s made some terrible, terrible mistakes.
The first mistake is obviously, hiring Allen. That did nothing but set the team back a few years. You could also throw in deals for Matt Flynn, Matt Schaub, and Rodger Saffold into the mix. Some might crucify him for poor draft picks like D.J. Hayden, Menelik Watson, and Tony Bergstrom. Others scream endlessly about some of the free agents he’s brought in, like Maurice Jones-Drew, LaMarr Woodley, and Carlos Rogers, who were quite obviously on the downside of their careers — and performed that way. And still others might blame him for not being able to lure elite free agent talent to Oakland.
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It seems that no matter what, McKenzie is going to have his own personal cadre of haters.
But the truth of the matter is that despite the fact that he’s had some absolute missteps, McKenzie has grown with this job, and has had quite a few more successes than he’s being given credit for. Despite having just three wins last season, it’s not absurd to say that the Raiders are a team on the rise, and that is in large part, thanks to McKenzie’s vision and leadership – not to mention his very deft handling of the really horrible salary cap situation that he inherited.
When McKenzie first walked through the door at Raiders HQ, he was met with a team that had no money to spend on free agents, and very few draft picks thanks to deals that were consummated before he’d arrived. He had a stack of contracts paying exorbitant amounts of money to players who were either well past their prime, or who were simply performing poorly.
McKenzie simply did the best he could with what he had – which wasn’t much.
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It wasn’t until 2013 that he finally shed the last of the ridiculous contracts that the elder Davis had stuck him with, and had a full slate of draft picks to work with. Though his first pick in that draft – in hindsight – hasn’t come close to living up to what he’d hoped it would be. McKenzie moved down from number three to number twelve, and took Hayden despite the fact that he was recovering from surgery for a very serious injury.
To say that Hayden hasn’t come close to living up to being such a high pick would be an understatement. But there is still time for him to become that elite cornerback that McKenzie obviously thought he could be.
In that 2013 draft though – Hayden aside – McKenzie made some very smart, very deft picks. Some of them are players that are still major contributors to today’s team. Sio Moore, Latavius Murray, and Mychal Rivera – three players expected to play major roles in 2015 – came out of that draft class. By most metrics, you could say that those three players made the 2013 draft a successful one for the Raiders.
The 2014 draft was even better as McKenzie was able to take perhaps, the best one-two combination of players the Raiders have seen in a very long time – possibly ever. He scored Khalil Mack and Derek Carr in rounds one and two. And in the later rounds, he was able to grab the likes of Travis Carrie, Gabe Jackson, and Justin Ellis – all players who made big contributions to the team last season. All players who are expected to make even bigger contributions to the team in 2015.
Now, here we are in 2015, and the Raiders once again have a high pick in the draft – fourth overall – and have had a ton of cap space at their disposal. Though they missed out on the bigger fish in this year’s free agency class – Ndamukong Suh, Randall Cobb, and DeMarco Murray, among others – he was able to bring in a very, very solid group of players who will be able to step in and contribute to the team immediately.
Though nobody would classify players like Dan Williams, Curtis Lofton, Nate Allen, Malcolm Smith, Rodney Hudson, and Roy Helu, among others, as an intimidating, fearsome, and marquee class of free agents, they are all solid, they are all upgrades at their positions, and they do make the Raiders more formidable overall.
And with that fourth overall pick, McKenzie will be able to add an Amari Cooper, Leonard Williams, Kevin White, or perhaps Vic Beasley, giving the Raiders even more teeth heading into the 2015 season.
McKenzie’s tenure as Oakland’s GM has never been flashy – what do you expect? He’s a product of Green Bay’s front office – and it has been filled with more than a couple false starts and poor decisions. But it has also been filled with some very solid draft picks, some free agent signings – did somebody say Justin Tuck and Donald Penn – that have worked out incredibly well for Oakland.
Brick by brick and piece by piece, McKenzie has been building this Raider team from the ground up. It has been a slow, arduous, and oftentimes frustrating process to watch. But as a culture, we’re so wired for instant gratification, that if we don’t see immediate results, we’re conditioned to believe that it’s all been a failure.
But with McKenzie and the Raiders, that’s hardly the case.
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No, we have not yet begun to see the results on the field. And Raider fans would do well to manage their expectations about the 2015 season as well. But Oakland, for the first time in a very long time, has laid a very solid foundation, has some very key pieces in place that will help drive the team to future success, and is built for the long term, rather than filled with a bunch of stop-gaps that ultimately, didn’t work out.
McKenzie’s vision for this team has always been for the long term. He’s been focused on the bigger picture, rather than the instant gratification so many demand. As the GM, McKenzie has absolutely made his share of mistakes, and then some. But he’s also done some pretty terrific things things for this Raiders’ organization that puts the team in a position to have some sustained and long term sucess.
Though the win-loss record may not show it, the Raiders are a vastly improved club today than the team McKenzie took over in 2012. It’s a team that is most definitely trending in the right direction. And the 2015 version of the team may be McKenzie’s best squad yet.He’s finally paired a very experienced coaching staff with some explosive young talent, and there is a genuine — and seemingly warranted — sense of optimism in Oakland that says better days are not that far off.
And when those better days do arrive – and they will – hopefully, the jeers that are heard whenever McKenzie’s name is mentioned will turn to cheers. McKenzie has a thankless job, there is no question, but he genuinely deserves far more credit than many people seem willing to give him.