Ok so as is Raiders tradition going back to the twilight years of Al our cap and our roster are a bit of a mess. We can’t do anything for 2023, it is what it is but we can look forward to 2024.

This isn’t as bad as it has been but we lack depth in most areas and we don’t have many players under long term contract who we really are in love with (aside from Tae and Maxx). Critically we lack young talent almost everywhere.

The $12 mil we owe Chandler we should get back because of conduct detrimental to the team (violating a court order etc.).

That means our biggest problem is Jimmy. I doubt we can trade him after how bad he’s looked so our only real option is to cut him after 6/1 2024. We save $13 mil but it costs us $15 in ‘24 and $13 in ‘25. If anyone has a better solution I’m all for it.

That’d give us an expensive of (approx) $170,600,000 against a maximum salary cap of probably $240 mil so money to spend. Problem is we’ve got holes, lots and lots of holes in the roster.

Starting up front.

We need to think long and hard about Andre James at centre. He’s been ok, nothing special but if we want to re-sign him it’ll cost us. Starting centres don’t grow on trees and we’re thin up front as it is, I’d say we move on but to what I’m not sure.

We’ve got Miller and Mumford for the foreseeable future at tackles. Parham is cheap so he’s probably staying out too.

Van Roten is a free agent so RG is a priority. The issue with our whole Oline is that aside from Miller are a bunch of regular players. Nothing exceptional going on here so we probably should spend money on proven linemen to protect whoever is our QB 2024.

Jacobs is the elephant in the room. After looking at what Taylor got he’ll want big money but, given our massive needs at: Oline, Dback, Linebacker, DT and QB we may need to invest that money elsewhere. It’ll really depend on how he shows out for the rest of the season.

WR is staked. Depending on if we’re committing to a rebuild or we’re trying to compete will need to restructure Adams contract which, if we can show that we’re bringing in young talent to supplement the roster and compete, maybe he’s open to. It could free up cap to grab someone in the off season to bolster the line.

The secondary is, as it has been for a decade+, a problem. We need to stop signing aging vets to one year patch up the line and compete deals. If AOC is Brees 2.0 then CB is going to be our first pick, we need a real ball hawk out there. I’m a big Bennett believer but he’s a project, Hobbs is an amazing nickel back but he’s not an outside the numbers guys. Maybe we can pry Alexander away from Greenbay. But we need depth and youth at S and CB.

QB is up in the air. If AOC balls out we stick with him. If we win 6-7 games then we’re not getting a top prospect without burning a lot of draft capital to go and pick someone. Unfortunately we’re not the 49ers, we aren’t loaded with talent so we need our picks. Depending on draft day slides we could walk away with a Ewers, Penix, Nix et al. But there are a lot of bad teams who need a QB (pats, greenbay, Washington, bears, cardinals, probably the rams, potentially the buccaneers and the Vikings) so I’m not expecting a lot of falls from grace.