NFL.com gave the Raiders a solid A for their offseason which is vastly different than the paltry grade ESPN gave them just days ago.
As we noted last week when ESPN put out an extremely low grade of the Raiders offseason, that opinion was an outlier. Right on cue, NFL media put out their grades of each NFL team’s offseason and further drove that point home.
The grade writer Matt Okuda gave to the Raiders for their offseason was a solid A. Which is far more in line with what seems to be the consensus opinion of what the Raiders did this offseason.
Meanwhile, Seth Walder over at ESPN seemed to glaze over the team landing Klint Kubiak as the top head coach candidate and reeling in Kirk Cousins as the top free agent QB, while giving them no credit for selecting Fernando Mendoza with the number one overall pick. In addition, he seemed to actually fault the Raiders for the Ravens backing out of their trade deal and spending the sizable amount of cap money they had in free agency.
Even if you don’t fault the Raiders for the blown up trade, you can’t say they area a better team without Crosby than with him. And to give them no credit for the additions of Kubiak, Cousins, and Mendoza is strange, bordering on suspect.
Okuda saw those moves as positives. Well, because they are.
Okuda was still fair in his assessment, adding the one thing that kept the Raiders from getting a perfect grade was the fact they didn’t do enough at wide receiver.
The team added next to nothing at wide receiver, with its biggest signing being Jalen Nailor on a far-too-expensive three-year, $35 million contract. That means Cousins, the team’s most likely Week 1 starter, and Mendoza, also expected to take snaps this season as a rookie, will spend the campaign throwing to Pro Bowl tight end Brock Bowers and a bunch of question marks. That makes me nervous.
He is absolutely right about that. It’s the one thing the Raiders did — or did NOT do, as it were — this offseason that is truly puzzling. And it’s the reason Las Vegas continues to be mentioned as the ideal landing spot for still free agent receivers out there, such as Stefon Diggs and Deebo Samuel.
Even still, there’s a lot to like about what the Raiders did this offseason. Heck, there were enough impact veteran additions alone, for us to put together a top ten ranking of them.
