Raiders head coach Jon Gruden said he didn't believe Oakland was "anywhere close to where the Bears were," in the record-setting deal that sent All-Pro pass rusher Khalil Mack to Chicago on Saturday.
"He's a great player for us, a great person, a great teammate," Gruden said Sunday. "I did have contact with him [Saturday], too, exchanging our best wishes to him and thanking him for being a great Oakland Raider. The negotiation was what it was. It was tough. It was a long process. We talked about it daily. We made him an offer. I don't believe we were anywhere close to where the Bears were. The Bears made us an offer we thought was really unique. Very, very tough to say goodbye to a great player, but here we are today."
The Raiders and Bears reached an agreement to send Mack to Chicago, with Mack then signing to a six-year, $141 million extension. Along with Mack, the Bears will get a 2020 second-round pick and a conditional 2020 fifth-round pick. The Raiders will get a 2019 first-round pick, 2020 first-round pick, 2020 third-round pick and a 2019 sixth-round pick. Gruden said that he was not involved in including the second-round pick that went back to the Bears in the Khalil Mack trade.
When asked if they would wait longer, Gruden said it was time.
"We have waited. We waited and waited, and the Rams game was looming," Gruden said. "Our feeling was he was not going to report anytime soon. ... We made a decision and we're going to stand by it."
Mack's deal includes $90 million guaranteed and a $60 million signing bonus and his contract makes him the highest-paid defensive player in NFL history. The 27-year-old was selected by the Rams with the fifth overall pick in the 2014 NFL draft. He finished last year with 10.5 sacks.
As I was making calls this week to try to unearth who would (and wouldn’t) be on the trade block ahead of this week’s final cutdown to 53, a Packers skill player came across my desk. So I texted with an executive who had intimate knowledge of the guy, and asked if he was functional as an offensive weapon. The response I got: “Should be functional for Green Bay, due to Rodgers being so good.”
We all may debate who the best quarterback in the league is now. What I’ve found is that debate is less heated inside NFL buildings. Most think it’s Aaron Rodgers. I set out a few days ago to try and reprise, on the fly, a larger project I ran three summers ago at NFL Network. The idea was to ask football people a simple question: Who will be the Top 5 QBs in football at the end of the season? I set the question up that way because it would reflect what these insiders thought would happen over the course of the season, rather than how things looked at the start of the season. Also, by keeping the ballot to five names, I’d take the pressure off of the responders feeling they needed to name their own quarterbacks, limiting it to players these coaches and scouts felt were truly top shelf. We wound up getting some interesting results (Andrew Luck at No. 2!) out of the process.
So this week I sent the texts out, and what follows is based solely on the opinions of NFL general managers, head coaches, scouting directors, offensive coordinators and quarterbacks coaches, with two defensive coaches mixed in for good measure. I received 32 ballots back, and scored five points for each first-place vote, four points for second-place, and so on. Without further ado, here are the results …