The Las Vegas Raiders infamously traded away Khalil Mack in 2018 but reportedly inquired about a trade to bring him back this offseason.
Jon Gruden’s arrival with the Las Vegas Raiders in 2018 didn’t exactly result in unanimous fanfare, especially once he started shaping the roster. The most controversial of those moves was trading All-Pro pass-rusher Khalil Mack to the Chicago Bears.
Even though Gruden received a treasure trove of draft picks in return for Mack, who was admittedly in the midst of a contract holdout, the Raiders gave up one of the league’s best players. And the trade continued to be in the minds of fans as Gruden and eventually general manager Mike Mayock made questionable selections with the picks acquired in the trade.
But now there’s a new wrinkle in the sage, one that was unexpected. Vic Tafur of The Athletic (subscription required) reported that, before Las Vegas signed Yannick Ngakoue this offseason, they reached out to the Bears about trading for Khalil Mack to address their need at edge rusher.
For what it’s worth, Chicago had no interest in dealing Mack and shot the Raiders down quickly. However, the fact that the silver and black reached out about the trade at all is indicative of an increasingly worrisome problem with the organization under the current regime.
Trying to trade for Khalil Mack highlights the ongoing dysfunction of the Las Vegas Raiders under Jon Gruden’s thumb.
In the simplest terms, Jon Gruden is fickle. He famously is always looking for his next quarterback — even if he’s stuck with Derek Carr with the Raiders — and is trying to find new ways to succeed. Unfortunately, that combined with the level of control he has with this team has manifested in a directionless franchise that doesn’t know where it’s going.
After trading Mack (and Amari Cooper), Gruden seemingly found his footing offensively as he constructed one of the league’s best offensive lines and molded Carr into a quality starting NFL quarterback. But the defense never lived up to par, which led us to the 2021 offseason.
Gruden and Mayock shoehorned their offensive line and tried to rebuild it on the fly but in a cheaper manner so that they could invest in the defense. That was why they tried to bring back Mack and eventually signed Ngakoue. Nevermind the fact that they used a top-five pick on Clelin Ferrell in all of this and he can’t crack the starting rotation on the edge, of course.
So now they have marginally improved the defense while making the offense likely less effective while competing in the AFC West, a division that arguably could be the best in football for the 2021 season.
What the Mack trade indicates, though, is that Gruden doesn’t have a steady plan for how to build the Las Vegas Raiders. It reads as someone backtracking from their initial plan because it didn’t work as well or as quickly as he’d hoped, so now the head coach and front office are trying to change course to something similar to how the situation was when they took over.
The Raiders are mired in dysfunction with Jon Gruden at the helm. Trying to trade for Khalil Mack is just another example of that. And until he settles on a decisive direction for the franchise, if he ever does, the results will continue to be mediocre in Las Vegas.