Reggie's biggest flop up to this point

McKenzie inherited a mess had his feet to the fire with the cap and no draft picks to speak of. He has done some good things but he has had a few misses too. Start with bringing in DA. It meant the resurrection of Knapp which was an unmitigated disaster. If you're going to fire the current guy you need to bring in somebody at least on his level or upgrade. Next came the cuts. Satele, Routt and Wimbley were the high profile cuts but there were others. I don't think he had a choice in this area so I give him a pass here but others may think differently. I didn't always feel this way but I've been swayed. Then came the FA additions. I'm talking about Bartell, Spencer, Lienert, Hanson, Briesel and Wheeler among others. Not a great group IMO but the UDFA signings made them tolerable. The draft picks are next. Bergstrom, Burris the WR and a few others who didn't make the cut. There were some trades but they barely make it on the radar. Campbell and Murphy were traded but it's pretty insignificant. Finally there were the restructures which is the biggie for me. Huff and Kelly were restructured to get under the cap and they weren't too bad but upon further review the Palmer and Seymour restructures look like bad business moves IMO. All the dead money associated with Palmer and Seymour leaves the team holding bag if they want to cut bait with those 2. It's hard for me to believe they couldn't have come up with contract terminology which would have made moving on from them less of a pill to swallow.

Reggie's hire has set in line, a series of flops.

All of the above.

But to me, the worst was not adjusting when the team was clearly sinking last season. You dont need to waste a whole season to cut Knapp for example. To return to an offensive system that was one of your strengths the season before.

FUERZA Raiders 

Any coach but one with a ZBS concept.

This bxtches anonymous meeting is brought to you by kleenex.

Biggest flop was Knapp no question about that but one of the bad moves in my opinion was resigning Branch to that big contract. If he was that valuable to Reggie we should have traded him for multiple draft picks last year since we were down picks. Now we are stuck with a safety thats being way overpaid and can't ever find the ball on the field. Reggies 2 biggest signings last year were terrible in Branch and Breisel these signings are no different in my opinion than anything Al Davis did in recent years, but I guess he gets a pass on the entire 1st year he has been here kinda like a mulligan you might say.

This bxtches anonymous meeting is brought to you by kleenex.

Uber's post brought to you by running out of Midol. 

Hiring DA. That is still the problem here for Allen choses to play "his"players rather than the players that give the team the best chance to win. That's why players like Pryor, Ausberry and Ross could hardly get on the field while Carson constantly killed drives and red zone opp, Brandon was only a check down TE who's YAC was nonexistent and Gio should have been a Calvin Klein model for as many poses he made stretched out every game.

Allen will continue to hold this team back unless Reggie or MD intervene. I believe Mike Holmgren will get DA off his playing favs issue or he will be packing up his visor and red Sharpie in the near future. This was definitely the first and worst decision of GM Reggie McKenzie.

In order...

#1 - Allowing Dennis Allen to hire Greg Knapp.

Now I'm all for hiring a HC and letting him pick his staff because I dont think it will truly work any other way. However, in this particular case, Reggie should have known that hiring Greg Knapp was a mistake and he should have STRONGLY suggested to Dennis Allen that he might want to look into alternatives. Greg Knapp NEVER should have gotten another OC job after we fired him the last time. The rest of the NFL already knew this, so why didnt Reggie?

#2 - S.Spencer & R.Bartell over T.Porter?

Now T.Porter isnt a shut down CB by any stretch but he was younger and more of a play maker than Bartell & Spencer were. Reggie could have signed him for the same price that he got R.Bartell so I'm still not sure why he didnt make that move.

#3 - Cutting DVD.

Now I dont think this was a MAJOR mistake or anything but it just didnt make sense. DVD had shown promise as a cover CB and he has at the very least enough speed to help out on special teams. Cutting a player that young that fast just didnt make any f'n sense.

#4 - Not re-signing S.Satele.

This was another move I didnt get. Satele was coming off a year where he played really well and S.Wisniewski was playing exceptionally well at LG. I would have kept the line intact with the only exception being that I would have replaced C.Carlisle at RG. As far as I'm concerned, we dismantled a unit of strength unnecessarily..

#5 - Not forcing the coaches to give more playing time to the young guys once the season was clearly over.

This one really agitated me. The fact that Dennis Allen said that M.Leinhart & T.Pryor would "compete" for the starting job in week #17 was just plain f'n stupid. What in the hell did they have to gain by not starting T.Pryor over M.Leinhart? Luckily for us, word is that M.Davis pretty much told them that T.Pryor had better be starting that game. If that's true, then good for Mark.

Week #17 aside, why wasnt T.Pryor getting reps in weeks 14, 15 & 16? The season was over and we had nothing to gain OTHER than getting our young guys some much needed experience. We wasted several opportunities to be able to get a solid look at young guys like T.Pryor, T.Bergstrom, J.Criner and C.Bilukidi. When you're 4-10 and out of the playoffs, there is NO reason not to give young guys more playing time.

his biggest flop was Knapp then Briesel



i wanted to say keeping Carson the first year but TP wasn't ready and cutting him and signing another QB would have been pointless if you were set on losing anyways

Hiring Dennis Allen. IMO Reggie will be worth his weight in gold (a lot of gold) in drafting and personnel. But I think Holmgren will take care of HC and other coaching hires from now on.

Emphasis on WILL and HOPE... Too early to tell.

I would have to say that his biggest mistake was waiting.  He should have blown up the team from day one.  I know he wanted a solid evaluation of the players when he was a part of the team, but it should have been apparent the some of these guys weren't worth the money they were making.

I think the reason he waited was because he was behind.  I know he was brought in fairly close to the end of the season, but on other teams the GM had been negotiating with player agents for months about this past seasons resignings and restructures.  The other GMs knew what kind of shape their team was in and didn't have to do the basic things, like getting computers and stuff like that so the team could move into the modern era of life.

Not listening to myself and DBB and Hateall....because everyone knows we're professional scouts and front office management men with years in the NFL.

i think darth-raider summed it up perfectly

Biggest mistakes I think he made, was not seeing first hand for himself the product that was in house. Being down the draft choices being strapped for cash and being over the salary cap wasn't a good situation to enter into but he knew that as well.

Time will only tell. But I would have liked to see Bruce Campbell and Joe Barksdale get their shot over bringing in Mike Briesel and Willie Smith. IF they where an epic fail, would anything have changed to this years time? What would have happened differently would they have been drafting number 1 or number 2 overall instead of 3?

Keeping Tyvon Branch over Kamerion Wimbley didnt and will never make sense to me. If you are strapped for cash and are down draft picks, let the guy walk to free agency that is a free agent and let someone else overpay him and scoop up a compensatory selection for the following year.

Cutting DVD and Chewka in favor of a guy that was benched in San Fran and a guy coming off a broken neck, didnt make much sense either. Again what would the difference have been, would they be drafting a spot or two higher this year?

I think instead of restructuring players like Seymour and Palmer in particular he should have just told them to take a pay cut. If they refused which they very well may have and probably would have, its gonna be pretty hard to wear that C on your jersey and its gonna be a hard sell to other teams that you are a "team" player and or leader.

But I trulely dont believe RM expected the team to be as bad as they where last year. And I understand wanting to back your coaches and give them what you can to make it work within their system.

If the franchise tag was to be used last year, using it on Satele would have made much more sense than Branch. For one, centers dont get paid a whole lot. He may have made 4 or 5 M tops. Nobody would have traded for him and they could have kept from LT to C in tact from the year before AND Satele was brought over for Tom Cable with much of the ZBS in mind. So they wouldn't have been as bad on the line and even if they had kept Cooper Carlisle he could have been at RG if Campbell or Barksdale struggled.

For me though its over and done with. Its all about moving forward.

That is still the problem here for Allen choses to play "his"players rather than the players that give the team the best chance to win. That's why players like Pryor, Ausberry and Ross could hardly get on the field while Carson constantly killed drives and red zone opp,

Guess the receivers who couldn't get open or flat out dropped balls for TD's and in the red zone are Carson's fault also. He made some dumb throws at times but he clearly tried forcing the ball since his receivers weren't helping him at all. He also had no running game especially in the red zone. Carson is a good QB but he needs help which he hasn't had since he has been here.

Keeping <span style="color: #0d3a80;">Tyvon Branch over <span style="color: #0d3a80;">Kamerion Wimbley didnt and will never make sense to me.  

K.Wimbley had what, 4 years left on his deal? At what, around $9-10 million per year? There is no f'n way Reggie or any GM with a brain was going to keep that contract. Now if you didnt like the T.Branch deal that understandable but I dont know how you justify paying someone like K.Wimbley over $10 million per year when he's not even a double digit sack guy and he's actually below average as an everydown 4-3 OLB.

I think instead of restructuring players like Seymour and Palmer in particular he should have just told them to take a pay cut. If they refused which they very well may have and probably would have, its gonna be pretty hard to wear that C on your jersey and its gonna be a hard sell to other teams that you are a "team" player and or leader

Because he had no leverage, especially with R.Seymour. Al Davis guaranteed almost every penny of R.Seymours deal so there was no way Seymour would have taken a pay cut to stick with a team that everyone knew wasnt going to be winning anything. Reggie pretty much had his hands tied with those two ridiculous contracts.

When a player states, whatever I need to do I will do, which is what Seymour stated, you put that to the test. Nobody is even sniffing him on the free agent front now, but they may have last year, there was a far more sensible plan he could have had than restructuring him for a 5 yr contract that everyone knew he would never see, including him.

The leverage he had was with their pride and or words. Carson stated he had plenty of money when he held out in Cincinatti. The Raiders should have nevered restructured his deal upon the trade, they should have ripped it up and started fresh. Ok, they didn't but they had the opportunity last year and if he didn't agree to it, who looks like the bad guy now? You may think it doesn't apply but it damn sure does in the case of Carson.

IDC what Wimbleys contract was,he wasnt gonna re work it, thats fine. He shows far more than Branch ever has. And thats ultimately the decision he made, keep Wimbley and lose Branch or vice versa. The only things that matter are the guaranteed aspects of the contract. Wimbley if I remember right could have earned as much as 18 M in guarantees, but there was a carrot attached to the end of that, he was gonna get his 12 guaranteed because thats the price of the franchise tag, which he got slapped with the year prior to and since he signed an extension the same year and in turn restructured  in which he was tagged, that 12 was locked in, but he had to reach incentives to get the remaining amount of bonus/guaranteed money. Which is why his cap hit wasnt as bad as it could have been.

Keeping Wimbley in the fold even at his rate made more sense than bringing in Tollefson at an 8th of what Wimbley was slated to make. Where as Mike Mitchell could have got more of a shot last year at a 10th of what Branch was gonna make on the tag.

Mitchell falls into the same category as Barksdale, Campbell, Chekwa and DVD. See what they have they aren't making much and you aren't gaining much by cutting them. What you replace them with is gonna cost more than what you gained getting rid of them.

Ok, they didn't but they had the opportunity last year and if he didn't agree to it, who looks like the bad guy now?  

No offense but since when did players start giving a fugg about public perception enough to take LESS MONEY? Now I may be wrong but I cant think of a single instance where a player took less money because he was worried about what his public perception would be if he didnt. The NFL is a business and these players know that. If a team is willing to tear up their contract after having one bad year or finding someone better, why wouldnt the players view things the same way? These guys dont play for the fans or even their teammates, they play for the money. 

You may think it doesn't apply but it damn sure does in the case of Carson.

What makes you say that? Carson doesnt give a flying fugg about public perception because if he did, he wouldnt have told the Bengals to "trade me or I'll retire". If he was willing to pull a move like that on the team that took him #1 and paid him $100 million what makes you think he wouldnt tell Oakland to pound sand when they demand a pay cut?