Oakland Raiders: Jon Gruden and Mike Mayock pull bizarre move

Oakland Raiders head coach Jon Gruden and general manager Mike Mayock pulled a bizarre and unprecedented move ahead of the 2019 NFL Draft.

If you’re an Oakland Raiders fan, the power struggle behind the scenes has to be a concern now if it wasn’t before.

Jon Gruden was signed to a 10-year contract in 2018 to be the team’s new head coach, and he immediately started pulling some weird strings.

He didn’t call Khalil Mack and then traded him for a bounty of draft picks from the Chicago Bears.

The Raiders’ first draft class under Gruden included some bizarre reaches like Kolton Miller in the first round. He was picked 15th overall and the Raiders have already paid Trent Brown more money than any tackle in league history to probably move Miller’s position a year later.

He then traded Amari Cooper and told the media after Cooper had already practiced with the Cowboys that he wasn’t sure if the trade had even gone through when asked about his being overly vague in regards to the move.

Gruden then pushed former GM Reggie McKenzie out of the front office and replaced him with NFL Network Draft analyst Mike Mayock, who has always been something of an on-air GM but got his first shot on a team with three first-round picks and a boatload of cap space.

The Raiders got busy spending that cap space and brought in some high profile players, but no move sent bigger shockwaves throughout the NFL than their acquisition of Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown, who has become quite the distraction this last 365 days.

The latest in the bizarre saga with the Raiders is unquestionably the most disturbing. Ian Rapoport of NFL Network reported the Raiders sent home their entire scouting department and won’t have them back for the 2019 NFL Draft.

As far as I know, this has never been done before. According to Rap Sheet’s report, the Raiders don’t know who to trust with their draft secrets, including Mayock’s own flesh and blood.

Mayock’s daughter calling an NFL scouting department ‘scouties’ is really not helping the situation, either. These guys put their head to the grindstone every year and scout players so they can help an NFL team win games, and for them to be dismissed at this point in the process is nothing short of egregious. Coupling it by telling them not to ‘take it personal’ is pretty brutal as well, but apparently this isn’t an abnormal thing for NFL teams to do, as few scouts are privy to the team’s final draft board anyway these days.

It’s the prerogative of Gruden/Mayock whether they want anyone else in the draft room with them this week as they prepare for some ultra-secret, ultra-sensitive draft day plan. Any edge you can get is important, I suppose, but what kind of reputation does this give the guys in charge of one of the NFL’s most storied franchises?

The proof will be in whether their plan is successful or not, and we won’t know that for a couple of years.

In the meantime, this is the type of move that will likely burn a few bridges and make some people really mad. This goes beyond checking feelings at the door. The Raiders are kicking their hard-working scouts out of the room completely and the consequences could be significant.