David Carr: It’s ugly, but Raiders fans need to take long view on trades

I have a photo of Derek Carr, Khalil Mack and Amari Cooper in their Pro Bowl jerseys – all of them hanging out together in Hawaii.

That photo was taken after the 2016 season. It was just two years ago, and two of those guys are gone now. Mack was traded to the Chicago Bears before the season, and Cooper was traded to the Dallas Cowboys this week. You kind of scratch your head and say, “Man, what are they really doing there?”

But it’s Jon Gruden’s show. He’s going to make the decisions, and the Raiders and their fans just have to trust that he is going to make the right ones – he has won a Super Bowl before as a coach, as the guy making a lot of personnel decisions.

If you’re in that locker room right now, there’s no question that it’s difficult. And if you’re a fan right now, it’s even more difficult because the Raiders are probably not going to be in Oakland by the time they get this thing figured out and start playing consistently at the level that Gruden wants his teams to compete.

It’s like what my brother tweeted the other day: “It’s not a popular thing to be a Raider right now.”

But he’s committed to it and knowing what I know about the situation, Gruden is committed to rebuilding this thing and bringing it back to where the Raiders were when they were in AFC Championship games and Super Bowls. Gruden feels that Derek, Rodney Hudson, Gabe Jackson, Kelechi Osemele – those guys are his nucleus. He sees those four players as guys he can start to build out from, and that’s the direction he’s going.

The difficult thing when a team gets in the situation that they’re in now, people are going to write things that are completely inaccurate and make up stories because it’s easy to do and most people are going to believe it: “Yeah, it’s the Raiders. They look like they’re in a ton of turmoil. Why wouldn’t they turn on each other?” For most people, that makes sense. Even if it’s not accurate, people are still going to read it and believe it.

There’s nothing fun about it.

Unfortunately, Derek has had more experience watching teams rebuild and struggle and rebuild and struggle just from watching me than any player needs to have in his lifetime. He knows the situation; he was 12 years old watching this whole thing happen.

But he’s very resilient. He’s very tough. He’s very stubborn. He’s going to keep working, like he said in his tweet.

Raiders fans, they just have to look at it through the lens of, “If we’re going to win a Super Bowl, we have to do something.”

They can look at it and say, “We were close. We were a good team, a couple of years ago.” Well, yes and no. The Raiders of 2016 won a lot of close games at the end, and probably had a couple more wins than they should have had.

Decisions have to be made, because when it really comes down to it you’re in it to win the Super Bowl – or you have to do something to get in position to win the Super Bowl.

Clearly, the Raiders were not in position to be in the AFC Championship or the Super Bowl this year based on what we saw early on. If you look at it from Gruden’s perspective, when the NFL Network interviewed him this summer in training camp, he didn’t believe the defense was very good even with Mack. The defense still isn’t very good. It needs to improve drastically, because Gruden came to Oakland for one reason: That’s to win a Super Bowl.

Cooper is not going to be the last person traded. He is not going to be the last person to be released or cut. I expect the Raiders to have more roster turnover than probably any team in the league, just based on what Gruden has probably watched so far and where he wants this team to be year in and year out.

It’s going to be key, obviously, what they do in the draft. After the trades, they have five first-round picks over the next two years – and they have to nail every one of them.

As of right now, they stand to have three of the top 15 in the 2019 draft.

If they nail those picks, it can turn that team around almost instantly. We’ve already seen what a first-round pick can do. Can you imagine the Giants having Saquon Barkley and then two other guys playing at his level?

That can turn a team around pretty quickly in this league.

It doesn’t have to be something that takes three or four years. It can be done quickly, especially for a team that has five first-round picks, and the Raiders do.

David Carr answers your questions

Each week, David Carr will answer a reader’s question in his column. Submit your questions by email to sports@fresnobee.com (please put “David Carr” in the subject line)

This story was originally published October 24, 2018 at 2:51 PM.