Report: Raiders General Manager Reggie McKenzie Not Returning for 2019 Season

[CrashMan510]

11 hours ago, N4L said:

pretty laughable when people say 'but but but he drafted mack, cooper, carr!' 

Yeah, and Trent Baalke drafted Deforest Buckner, that doesn't mean he was a good GM.

 

You mean the same cooper that everyone laughed at the cowboys for trading another first rounder for? (one that wasn't even a top 5 pick, like the one the raiders used on him)

You mean the QB that everyone thought Gruden would dump after a season? 

 

Reggie's fate was sealed when he gave the bears an additional second rounder back

Lol what is this. Jon gruden took away reggies testicles the moment he got hired. He had as much to do with that bears trade as mark davis barber

[MrOaktown_56]

Lets be honest here. Reggie had some hits. But hits don't define a GM. Consistency defines a GM. We never got consistent starters or good players on day 2. That's devastating. Let me list some things out, before everyone becomes a revisionist and suggests that Reggie was actually a GOOD GM.

-We never fielded one good LB under reggie. He refused to draft a LB high.

-Under reggie, we never fielded a league average defense once.

-Under reggie we drafted one wide receiver in the first 3 rounds of the draft in 7 years. Once. Tell me how this is a good idea?

-Under reggie, we drafted one tight end in the first 3 rounds of the draft in 7 years, who busted. Tell me how good he is at drafting skill position players.

-Under reggie, we didn't draft a single impact DL aside from mack in 7 years.

-Under reggie, we drafted one good CB in his entire tenure (Conley).

At least some of our rookies this year (under Gruden's "horrible drafting") have actually showed promise. We took hurst in the 5th round and he's our best DL outside of mack in the last 8 years. We are taking chances on talented players with red flags (hurst, key, etc.) who we would have passed on with reggie. 

We need fresh blood at GM. I like that reggie helped turn us from an embarrassment to mediocre, but we need a fresh GM candidate to help take advantage of this draft capital. Good GM's hit in picks on day 2, who form the core of your team. Not just high first rounders.

That's nowhere near some of these good GM's around the league.

 

[BayRaider]

1 hour ago, CrashMan510 said:

Lol what is this. Jon gruden took away reggies testicles the moment he got hired. He had as much to do with that bears trade as mark davis barber

It was Grudens idea to trade Mack but the compensation was all Reggie, evidenced by the Cowboy trade where he was the one doing the negotiating.

[big_palooka]

11 hours ago, mtmmike said:

I thought he did a good job drafting lineman and we could could definitely use help there

He did a good job paying them in FA. Outside Gabe Jackson, he hasn't drafted a single starting caliber Olinmen and had a notable bust in round 2 in Watson. He made Osemele and Hudson the highest paid at their position in FA. 

[Darbsk]

19 hours ago, RaidersAreOne said:

He was bad. Davis stood back for years and let Reggie do his thing, only to see the team continue to suck and needed to make a change. Reggie is a cap expert and that's pretty much the extent of his success here.

What is a GM supposed to do? Draft well, sign contributing FAs, hire a viable coaching staff. He did none of those things consistently. He hit on a number of picks (Carr, Mack, Cooper, Conely), but missed on A LOT (Hayden, Obi, Ward, etc). He got schooled in trades constantly. He made questionable coaching decisions (Keeping KNJ and firing Musgrave).

The playoff run a number of years ago (which so many keep noting) was built on an unsustainable model of Carr being magic in the 4th Q. We were not a playoff deserving team that year and it showed. We had Mack on D and nothing else.

Look, I loved Reggie in the early years, but quite frankly he needed to go because what he was doing did not lead to many W's.

I think we are at opposite ends of the Reggie spectrum RaidersAreOne! In reply to the above points:

What is a GM supposed to do? Draft well - Drafted a franchise QB, an All Pro pass rusher aswell as contributors like Cooper, Conley who looks like a potential star, Gabe Jackson, Justin Ellis, Joseph, Carrie, Murray and a number of other lower round guys who have all contributed. I'm not going to pretend he didn't have a frustrating number of busts, he did but so does any other GM. He got the two most important positions that we hadn't had for aeons and laid the foundations.

What is a GM supposed to do? sign contributing FAs - How about a legitimate OL in Penn, Hudson, KO or Irvin to pair with Mack. Cook looks a great signing, as was Crabtree, Lee Smith, Marshawn Lynch and any number of very good ST guys. He also found numerous UDFA contributors like Richard, King, Olawale. He also did it without putting us in cap hell and without mortgaging the future of the franchise - something that is very underrated and underappreciated.

What is a GM supposed to do? hire a viable coaching staff - Dennis Allen was indeed thrown to the wolves, but in our predicament at that time no name coach was going to be taking that job on, Allen was a place holder who was always going to be expendable throughout the rebuild. IMO Del Rio was a great hire, turned around the culture and brought in a genuine OC in Musgrave who worked wonders for us. I think the players really appreciated and played hard for JDR evidenced by them playing hard right to the last minute and numerous come from behind wins and clutch moments and he did take us back to the playoffs for the first time in a long, long time. I'm not going to speculate on who had the final say or how Ken Norton Jr stayed and Musgrave departed but that was obviously a huge mistake and I share the blame between JDR and Reggie.

I'm not taking into account this years FAs or draft as obviously Gruden had a huge role in those. It's easy to just wave away the playoff run and say it was luck or whatever but we hadn't done it previously and it remains to be seen if we can do it in future. It happened, there were reasons for the (fully deserved) success and Reggie played a huge part in it, to deny or just ignore that is intellectually dishonest.

A lot of raider fans wanted and wished for Gruden to come back and take control and obviously I hope he succeeds, I really do, I just can't help but hear the words ringing in my head 'be careful what you wish for, you might just get it'. 

[swede700]

Deleted

[Heinz D.]

16 hours ago, CWood21 said:

I find this incredibly hard to believe.  They brought in an OC who had very limited experience calling plays when he was with Kansas City.  Remember, Andy Reid was the one who called plays so Nagy was a near unknown in terms of what he was going to call offensively.  And they threw a 3 years, $42M deal to a WR coming off a torn ACL.  They also threw 4 years, $32M at an H-Back and 4 years, $26M at a slot WR.  They threw some decent weapons Trubisky's way, but Allen Robinson was really the only significant addition.  There was a TON of unknowns with regards to the Bears.

Yet again, the Bears have nothing to do with the Raiders firing McKenzie. I'm not sure why this is a difficult concept to grasp. And also, yet again, a lot of folks in the football media expected the Bears to be improved this year. Whether you thought that, or not, doesn't make other people's opinions vanish. 

22 hours ago, RaidersAreOne said:

Really?

Exactly. Even bad GMs generally bring in some good players. That's just how it goes. I don't even know if I'd classify McKenzie as "bad". But he certainly wasn't very good. The last couple of years have borne that out. Gruden's blowing up the team, and I expect good things in the future. 

[Roninho]

10 hours ago, Darbsk said:

I think we are at opposite ends of the Reggie spectrum RaidersAreOne! In reply to the above points:

What is a GM supposed to do? Draft well - Drafted a franchise QB, an All Pro pass rusher aswell as contributors like Cooper, Conley who looks like a potential star, Gabe Jackson, Justin Ellis, Joseph, Carrie, Murray and a number of other lower round guys who have all contributed. I'm not going to pretend he didn't have a frustrating number of busts, he did but so does any other GM. He got the two most important positions that we hadn't had for aeons and laid the foundations.

What is a GM supposed to do? sign contributing FAs - How about a legitimate OL in Penn, Hudson, KO or Irvin to pair with Mack. Cook looks a great signing, as was Crabtree, Lee Smith, Marshawn Lynch and any number of very good ST guys. He also found numerous UDFA contributors like Richard, King, Olawale. He also did it without putting us in cap hell and without mortgaging the future of the franchise - something that is very underrated and underappreciated.

What is a GM supposed to do? hire a viable coaching staff - Dennis Allen was indeed thrown to the wolves, but in our predicament at that time no name coach was going to be taking that job on, Allen was a place holder who was always going to be expendable throughout the rebuild. IMO Del Rio was a great hire, turned around the culture and brought in a genuine OC in Musgrave who worked wonders for us. I think the players really appreciated and played hard for JDR evidenced by them playing hard right to the last minute and numerous come from behind wins and clutch moments and he did take us back to the playoffs for the first time in a long, long time. I'm not going to speculate on who had the final say or how Ken Norton Jr stayed and Musgrave departed but that was obviously a huge mistake and I share the blame between JDR and Reggie.

I'm not taking into account this years FAs or draft as obviously Gruden had a huge role in those. It's easy to just wave away the playoff run and say it was luck or whatever but we hadn't done it previously and it remains to be seen if we can do it in future. It happened, there were reasons for the (fully deserved) success and Reggie played a huge part in it, to deny or just ignore that is intellectually dishonest.

A lot of raider fans wanted and wished for Gruden to come back and take control and obviously I hope he succeeds, I really do, I just can't help but hear the words ringing in my head 'be careful what you wish for, you might just get it'. 

He does have a decent story for a future gm job interview:

* got a team out of cap hell

* drafted a franchise qb and a HOF DE

* got the raiders into the playoffs

Having said that, his inability to develop this team into a stable contender ended his raiders career: bad coaching decisions, failure to solve glaring holes on d, lacklustre results in the past drafts.

 

[Darbsk]

9 hours ago, Roninho said:

He does have a decent story for a future gm job interview:

* got a team out of cap hell

* drafted a franchise qb and a HOF DE

* got the raiders into the playoffs

Having said that, his inability to develop this team into a stable contender ended his raiders career: bad coaching decisions, failure to solve glaring holes on d, lacklustre results in the past drafts.

 

I would think he'd be a good candidate for a number of teams, but I think his card was marked as soon as Gruden was appointed by MD. You just don't give a guy that length of contract and that salary just to be HC. For sure, Reggie should have done a better job in the 2nd round of the draft in particular and we never found any answers at LB - though I do wonder if Bowman could have been a medium term solution given his decent play last year and his impact on organisation and less missed assignments. I would think with Bowman in the middle and Mack and Irvin on the edges and the emergence of Conley and Joseph we might have had the makings of a decent D........... but we'll never know!

What I do find a little distasteful is the constant 'deny all knowledge' attitude of Gruden, playing down his role in almost every situation. He's clearly the catalyst behind the Mack and Cooper trades, the Irvin situation, the rumours surrounding other players and the in-season retirements yet he just acts like he only found out about these things the same time as the waterboy .........something very fishy about all that IMHO.  

[Roninho]

well his card was marked before gruden was hired by del rio's awfull last season. Go 9-7 and into the playoffs that year and imo there is no Gruden in Oakland. 

 

[MrOaktown_56]

On 12/11/2018 at 4:52 AM, Darbsk said:

I think we are at opposite ends of the Reggie spectrum RaidersAreOne! In reply to the above points:

What is a GM supposed to do? Draft well - Drafted a franchise QB, an All Pro pass rusher aswell as contributors like Cooper, Conley who looks like a potential star, Gabe Jackson, Justin Ellis, Joseph, Carrie, Murray and a number of other lower round guys who have all contributed. I'm not going to pretend he didn't have a frustrating number of busts, he did but so does any other GM. He got the two most important positions that we hadn't had for aeons and laid the foundations.

What is a GM supposed to do? sign contributing FAs - How about a legitimate OL in Penn, Hudson, KO or Irvin to pair with Mack. Cook looks a great signing, as was Crabtree, Lee Smith, Marshawn Lynch and any number of very good ST guys. He also found numerous UDFA contributors like Richard, King, Olawale. He also did it without putting us in cap hell and without mortgaging the future of the franchise - something that is very underrated and underappreciated.

What is a GM supposed to do? hire a viable coaching staff - Dennis Allen was indeed thrown to the wolves, but in our predicament at that time no name coach was going to be taking that job on, Allen was a place holder who was always going to be expendable throughout the rebuild. IMO Del Rio was a great hire, turned around the culture and brought in a genuine OC in Musgrave who worked wonders for us. I think the players really appreciated and played hard for JDR evidenced by them playing hard right to the last minute and numerous come from behind wins and clutch moments and he did take us back to the playoffs for the first time in a long, long time. I'm not going to speculate on who had the final say or how Ken Norton Jr stayed and Musgrave departed but that was obviously a huge mistake and I share the blame between JDR and Reggie.

I'm not taking into account this years FAs or draft as obviously Gruden had a huge role in those. It's easy to just wave away the playoff run and say it was luck or whatever but we hadn't done it previously and it remains to be seen if we can do it in future. It happened, there were reasons for the (fully deserved) success and Reggie played a huge part in it, to deny or just ignore that is intellectually dishonest.

A lot of raider fans wanted and wished for Gruden to come back and take control and obviously I hope he succeeds, I really do, I just can't help but hear the words ringing in my head 'be careful what you wish for, you might just get it'. 

8

Even for the worst GM's in the league, they have had hits. The league is built around parity. Terrible teams can still find good players with FA and the draft. 

You're being way too nice. For the standards prior to the Raiders, he was night and day better. But that isn't a reason to retain him. His drafting when he wasn't picking in the top 10 was poor consistently. Many good teams land 2-3 starters out of every class. All the players you mentioned are basically reggie's only hits. And most of them are first round players. That's not really saying much. Many GM's bust, but you can't bust in the 2nd round. That's not acceptable.

Mckenzie's last 3 draft classes sunk this team. He invested so many picks into the defense from 2015-17 with no reward. And he refused or was unable to draft young skill position talent aside from Cooper, which was done with a top 5 draft pick.

I'm happy we're moving on. Time to find a fresh new face and hopefully push this thing in the right direction. And maybe take some chances on red flag/risky players, as opposed to shunning big school players like Mckenzie did so consistently in addition to always taking small school developmental guys.

[Darbsk]

9 hours ago, MrOaktown_56 said:

Even for the worst GM's in the league, they have had hits. The league is built around parity. Terrible teams can still find good players with FA and the draft. 

You're being way too nice. For the standards prior to the Raiders, he was night and day better. But that isn't a reason to retain him. His drafting when he wasn't picking in the top 10 was poor consistently. Many good teams land 2-3 starters out of every class. All the players you mentioned are basically reggie's only hits. And most of them are first round players. That's not really saying much. Many GM's bust, but you can't bust in the 2nd round. That's not acceptable.

Mckenzie's last 3 draft classes sunk this team. He invested so many picks into the defense from 2015-17 with no reward. And he refused or was unable to draft young skill position talent aside from Cooper, which was done with a top 5 draft pick.

I'm happy we're moving on. Time to find a fresh new face and hopefully push this thing in the right direction. And maybe take some chances on red flag/risky players, as opposed to shunning big school players like Mckenzie did so consistently in addition to always taking small school developmental guys.

You raise some good points and I don't disagree on a number, we've had some very poor drafts - I was particularly scathing about the 2016 draft on this forum, grading the Ward and Cook picks an F and taking a lot of criticism for it on here  but I think our general expectations are above what is reality, most GMs draft more players that flame out or bust than productive starters and stars, Reggie has been statistically around average - but, and this this the kicker for me - he drafted two stars at the two most important positions which we'd needed for far too long. This swings it into credit for me as it's much harder as history indicates to draft these two positions or most every team would have them. 

The deed is done however and the axe has fallen so I'll support whomever is parachuted into the faux role within reason. I hope they succeed tremendously and if they do then I'll be wrong and say so, we got to the point where we couldn't keep McKenzie and Gruden as many saw as inevitable. He simply had to go or lose all self respect and be neutered. I think this whole season has been handled badly as it had so much promise and I would certainly have done differently (oh, to be given the chance ) but it is what it is and we've just got to see how this thing turns out..................

[big_palooka]

On 12/11/2018 at 1:35 AM, CrashMan510 said:

Lol what is this. Jon gruden took away reggies testicles the moment he got hired. He had as much to do with that bears trade as mark davis barber

Actually........

https://theathletic.com/708815/2018/12/11/remembering-the-reggie-mckenzie-era-the-success-of-his-2014-draft-couldnt-outweigh-the-other-failures/

Quote

Davis and Gruden didn’t think McKenzie got enough — giving back a second-round pick for two first-rounders because the Bears realized the Raiders were desperate — and McKenzie made the mistake of saying he didn’t think Chicago was going to be very good and the next year’s pick should be a high one. The Bears are 9-4.