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Raiders hire draft analyst Mike Mayock as general manager

ESPN News Services

The Oakland Raiders have hired NFL Network draft analyst Mike Mayock as their general manager, the team announced Monday.

Raiders coach Jon Gruden called Mayock a "passionate personnel man" on Sunday following his team's season-ending 35-3 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.

"He loves it," Gruden said. "He has done it for a long time. I know he has had opportunities to get back into the NFL as a general manager. We will see what happens. We will see how the dust settles."

Mayock has no experience in an NFL front office but will work with Gruden on upgrading a scouting and personnel department that struggled to find impact players in recent years. Mayock replaces Reggie McKenzie, whom the Raiders fired on Dec. 10.

He had drawn interest from teams with general manager openings in recent years, including the Washington Redskins before the 2017 season.

The Raiders, who finished 4-12, have the No. 4 overall pick in the draft, as well as the first-round picks belonging to the Dallas Cowboys and Chicago Bears.


http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/25653...general-manager

I don't know if this will work, but it'll be fun.

Also, this bumps Daniel Jeremiah up a chair on NFL Network and that is not a bad thing.

Wait, this isn't from The Onion??

It'll be interesting to see how he fares. Raiders are certainly trying different things

"Different things" = Don't have a home stadium for 2019

I was going to say that I'll miss his analyses and breakdowns of QB prospects, but then I remembered that we actually have a QB. I do like Jeremiah just as well.

Not sure about this. I wonder what his track record is as far as the draft. Seems like in general most of these analysts are only slightly better at best than some of our board members. But I guess if Gruden is running the team and the GM is pretty much an assistant to the HC then it could work. My track record in fantasy football is pretty good, maybe I can float my resume out there.

The Gods of Pure Frigging Football would strike me dead if I would dare to post an article from The Onion at their altar.

Mike Mayock's QB rankings for 2014 draft class (Derek Carr's draft year):

1. Johnny Manziel, Texas A&M
2. Blake Bortles, Central Florida
3. Derek Carr, Fresno State
4. Jimmy Garoppolo, Eastern Illinois
T-5. Zach Mettenberger, LSU
T-5. Teddy Bridgewater, Louisville

**********

Ouch.

Good for him.

I don't see this working out well. Keep his spot open at the NFL Network.

I like him better than Kiper during the draft.

I think that he is old school enough to get along with Gruden just fine.

This year's...

1. Sam Darnold, USC
2. Josh Allen, Wyoming
3. Josh Rosen, UCLA
4. Baker Mayfield, Oklahoma
5. Lamar Jackson, Louisville

How did the "real" GMs do?

1. Bortles
2. Manziel
3. Bridgewater
4. Carr
5. Jimmy G.

Who did better?


This is not me endorsing Mayock. It's me saying that I think NFL GMs make mistakes all the time.

I'll say the GM's did very slightly better, but I agree with your point.

I think Mayock will be fine. His biggest obstacle to overcome is learning the day to day stuff since he didn't work in a scouting dept before. I enjoy his breakdown of prospects though and think he will be fine working with Gruden.

Yes, no doubt, NFL GMs make mistakes all the time, but having Johnny Manziel @ #1 on your QB list that year is a mistake of epic proportion. I'm not a scout, nor do I play one on TV, but I knew Manziel was a disaster at QB in the NFL, and I also thought Bridgewater, Carr, and Garoppolo were the 3 best that year.

Agree w/all of that.

I do want to reiterate that I am not saying this is a good move by the Raiders. I just think there are a lot of misses by GMs each year, especially when it comes to QBs. It's hard to tell if a lot of these guys will be able to make the post-snap reads because they are never asked to do it.

Btw--------when I looked up that draft........guess who was the number 2 overall pick?

I didn't have Garrapolo as high. In fact I think I had Mettenberger ahead of him.

I've spent a lot of time looking at QB's too. (something I won't need to do next year thankfully)

QB's are the toughest to get right. Most do not transition to the NFL well. I never get WR's right either.

I don't think Gruden would allow anyone to pick his QB anyway, soo it's probably moot.

Who was #2 in that draft?

Greg Robinson, our starting LT. LOL

LT's are tough to project too. That's a more recent thing though. LOL

Yep..............and for many of the same reasons that make projecting qbs so hard.

The Raiders are entering a really strange space in the coming seasons, with or without Mayock.

Gruden never liked playing rookies and young players. During this past off-season, he brought in a bunch of older vets who mostly proved to be slow and ineffective. This is pretty typical talent evaluation for Gruden.

And then the Raiders traded away some of their top talent for a bunch of high draft picks. I'm thinking it was Mark Davis, suffering a severe cash flow crunch, who ordered these moves rather than the ex-GM Reggie McKenzie.

(The worst part for Raiders fans happened about a month after Khalil Mack was sent packing. Gruden made a passing remark during a press conference, complaining how it's almost impossible to find a bona fide NFL pass rusher in the draft. Yeah... that comment went down really well with Raider Nation.)

So now the Raiders are going to have all this young talent flooding onto the roster. Young talent chosen by Gruden who is a proven poor draft talent evaluator. And yet Gruden doesn't like playing young players. So what will happen with all these high pick rookies?

Gruden and Davis make suuuuuch a wonderful team, don't they? And they are stuck with each other for up to nine more years and $90 million. What a mess that is going to be. Davis can barely afford the constant minor repairs on that old PoS beater pickup of his and all the midnight runs to Taco Bell.

If TV revenues decline in the coming years, I wonder if Mark Davis will be the first NFL franchise owner who declares bankruptcy? Modell almost did, until the NFL forced him to sell out to Bisciotti. Maybe Davis will take the first place prize?

Mark Davis should be good for awhile with the new stadium.

That's what Art Modell thought when he moved to Baltimore. That sweet, sweet, lucrative stadium deal was supposed to save him from his own horrific financial incompetence. But things didn't work out that way.

Davis is in a tough spot financially. He very likely had to borrow the money to pay the NFL that massive relocation fee. He may or may not be on the hook for a fair chunk of stadium construction costs or at least the overruns. Davis is on the hook to Gruden $10 million a year for the next nine years. Davis can't afford to sign high talent free agents or even retain the best of his own drafted players. Davis is as poor as Mike Brown, but without Brown's penny pinching craftiness to help keep his head above water.

I don't think the Vegas stadium deal will be enough to save Davis. With goofball Gruden in charge, do you really think the Vegas Raiders will flourish and develop a strong native fan base in Las Vegas by winning lots of games? Meh... unlikely. Depending on non-Vegas Raider Nation fans flying in eight games a year won't work. The regular tourists would rather watch strippers or Celine Dion shows. I just don't see the case for high attendance at the new Raiders stadium.

Nah. I see nothing but financial troubles and football troubles aplenty for Mark Davis. He will bring it all down upon his own head, which I couldn't care less about. I feel the pain for Raider Nation though. No NFL fanbase should have to suffer the horrors of incompetent ownership.

This is why I favor a expanding the NFL to 36 teams and setting up three tiered divisions of 12 teams each with relegation among the tiers every two years. A lion's share of the shared revenues would go to the top division, with the second division getting a big chunk of remaining revenues, and the loser third division getting the table scraps. This would quickly weed out lazy, stupid owners much the same way Randy Lerner was relegated out the Premier League.

Think how much fun it would be to watch foolish billionaires buy their way into the top division for $2 billion and over the course of a decade run the team into the bottom end of the third division and then having to sell the team for a couple hundred million.

No mistake in making predictions. The QB’s on that list haven’t proven much yet. And the FO who drafted Menziel made the mistake of epic proportions not Mayock.

Good work if you can find it. I thought the Raiders had gotten done with foolish moves. Maybe now. Never put a lot of stock in his mocks before. Just what he achieves will be interesting to see, I guess.

I expected to read "April Fool!" Guess not.

Is bankruptcy an option?

On the surface I can see why that may seem like an easy conclusion to draw, but I was blown away by what I saw in person.

I was in Vegas last month, took a helicopter ride to the Canyon, the building boom is mind-boggling and it's a race to accommodate new arrivals in time for the Raiders - no lie. The metro area already has a population of 2 million+ and longtime residents have been screaming for a sports franchise for decades. Those people are goo-goo over their hockey team... every man, woman and child sporting a jersey. There will be no problems supporting the stadium, "strong native fan base" is already there. I think I used Uber eight times while I was there... every driver wanted to talk about their Raiders coming to town. The excitement and anticipation is off the charts.

His success as a general manager will be tied to the competence of the people surrounding him. If Oakland staffs a solid football administration department, and Mayock focuses exclusively on talent evaluation, then I can think of worse hires than a professional armchair GM; however, if they expect him (alongside Gruden) to fulfill all of the functions of an empowered general manager, then they're in for a rude awakening.

That said, it's nice not being the laughingstock of the league anymore.

I have questions about this whole Mayock thing. Gruden has the $100 million, 10-year deal. From where I sit that looks like final say over virtually every aspect of football operations for the Faders. That had a lot to do with pushing McKinzie out of that organization. I got the feeling he wasn't in agreement with any number of moves that Gruden made this year, then they scapegoated him on his way out the door. Now in comes Mayocks with virtually no experience evaluating players for their fit for the longterm direction of a specific roster. Not to mention setting up draft boards or the using free agency, or salary cap management. Combine that with the fact this franchise appears very unstable at this time. Is Gruden going to concede any power to Mayock? I don't think so.

Train wreck.

I could *somewhat* understand them hiring him on a consultant basis as Director of College Scouting, but GM?

Makes little to no sense.... grab some popcorn folks, this is our new entertainment.

There’ll be no gm there bro ... there will only be Gruden puppets ...

No one serious about being an nfl gm would take that job unless they were BRAIN DEAD ...

Davis is not stable at all .. heck .. they have no stadium for next year right now ...

Then your only gonna be Grudens puppet .. he has ALL THE POWER there ..

Like u said .... TRAIN WRECK ... were just talking about different parts of the train that will be wrecked ... *L*...

This is starting to smell like when we brought in Holmgren and he invented titles to hire all of his agent's clients.

I agree. Las Vegas will support their team. It's not just tourists who are in Las Vegas. Lot's of people live there.

Las Vegas will also be a desirable destination for fans wanting to take a roadtrip to see their team.

I don't think there will be a shortage of season ticket holders, and people who buy those usually take 5-6-7 years of losing to finally get fed up and dump them.

Gruden, Mayock, and Davis have a pretty nice grace period in front of them.

People blame Gruden for trading away all the talent but the truth behind it is the Raiders are hurting for cash. They didn't have the money to sign those players so they did what they had to and got picks in return. Picks that will cost a lot less. Once they move to Vegas they will have a better money situation and will be able to keep their talent. Where they play next year is anyone's guess but the following year they will be in a bright shiny new stadium in Vegas and that will change a lot of things for the Raiders. Then the question will be, do the people of Vegas support the team even half as good as Raider fans did these many years?

Raiders will either be sold or moved again in the next 5-8 years

In Vegas with new digs and the Raider name. Easy sell if necessary.

Grudens ego at work here ...

Nathan Peterman - QB - Raiders

Raiders signed QB Nathan Peterman to a reserve/future contract.

It adds the worst quarterback of the decade thus far to the Raiders' offseason roster. Coach Jon Gruden now has an entire offseason to mold one of his favorite players. Also signed to reserve/future deals were WR Saeed Blacknall, RB James Butler, LB Cayson Collins, LB James Cowser, WR Rashard Davis, DB Makinton Dorleant, P Drew Kaser, OT Jamar McGloster and FB Ryan Yurachek.

Jan 1 - 5:16 PM