Oakland Raiders: Reasons why adding Kareem Hunt is an asinine idea
By Kevin Saito
PR nightmare
From a very cold, calculating, PR perspective, adding Hunt to the roster would be a nightmare. Not only is this team already dealing with all of the fallout and backlash of a 2-9 season, as well as what many still perceive as the controversial trades of Khalil Mack and Amari Cooper, the Raiders have dealt with a lot of slings and arrows all season long.
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Jon Gruden is finding out the hard way that you just can’t polish a turd, as the old saying goes.
Although there are a lot of very sound football and business-related reasons for moving on from Mack and Cooper, Gruden has created a firestorm of backlash among the Raider Nation. He’s gone from being a conquering hero and prodigal son, to absolute villain, less than a year into his return to the club.
How quickly the sentiment of the Nation has turned on Chucky is actually kind of impressive in a gallows humor sort of way.
The point though, is that for a team looking to maintain ties with its staunchly loyal fanbase, having to justify this move or that move, put a positive spin on yet another loss, and come up with silver linings week in and week out, has been a constant headache for this organization.
Now, there would obviously be tremendous support for the addition of a back as talented as Hunt from some corners, but there would be an equal, if not greater, amount of backlash from other corners.
Just ask Washington after they claimed Reuben Foster on waivers – and they didn’t even have a video showing exactly what he did. At least, not yet – TMZ is probably already on that though.
The point is that it would be yet another headache for the team to deal with – one they most certainly do not need.