Khalil Mack Might Owe Bears His Life Based on This Raiders Soap Opera
Khalil Mack may have been disappointed the way things ended with the Oakland Raiders. They were his first team, after all. He’d always hoped to bring a championship back to that city. It was the one who’d drafted him out of Buffalo and helped turn him into a Defensive Player of the Year. Then, just like that, he was traded to the Chicago Bears last September. Everything he’d done for them was thrown into the trash because he wanted too much money.
In truth though, hindsight is 20/20. Mack must be thanking his lucky stars that the Bears were so aggressive to get him because what’s been happening since he left can’t be made up in any book of fiction. The Raiders have been surrounded by one controversy after another from an apparent litany of locker room concerns over Derek Carr’s toughness to their history-making bad pass rush.
Yet head coach Jon Gruden somehow found a way to spice things up further when he used a ton of that money the team saved for Mack to acquire superstar wide receiver Antonio Brown from the Pittsburgh Steelers. On the surface, it looked like a favorable gamble. Brown is a numbers machine who could help Carr in the passing game.
However, he came with a full-size suitcase of red flag. Most notably his self-entitled attitude and rapid mood swings. He was known as a loose cannon that was becoming less reliable by the day. Things have since entered DefCon 1 for the Raiders. Brown has already missed most of camp with a frostbite issue on his feet during a training mishap. Now Mike Silver of NFL.com revealed the craziness has only intensified.
Khalil Mack certainly seems like he escaped a runaway train
While the Raiders have been dealing with this, the Bears went through training camp without a single controversy to speak of. Mack dominated practices and seems poised for one of the best seasons of his career. The Bears look like a team ready to compete for a Super Bowl. How fitting might it be if he used his former team as a stepping stone in that quest? Chicago plays Oakland in London at the beginning of October.
The Raiders went from thinking their receiving corps was upgraded to wondering aloud if Brown will even be there. Word is he’s threatening to retire from the NFL over this helmet issue. It’s clear to lots of people he is not engaged in making the team better. If he were then this issue wouldn’t have even been a thing. If the receiver does walk away, then Oakland will have lost draft picks for nothing in return.
Mack must be thinking he’s damn glad he didn’t have to be part of it.