The Raiders won’t have Davante Adams on the field for Sunday’s game against the Steelers and they’re set to be without another member of the receiving corps as well.
Jakobi Meyers was listed as questionable with an ankle injury on Friday’s injury report, but the team has now downgraded him to doubtful. That means Meyers is expected to be inactive on Sunday afternoon.
Meyers was out of practice on Wednesday and Thursday before returning for a limited session to close out the week.
DJ Turner, Tre Tucker, and Tyreik McAllister are the other wideouts on the 53-man roster. Kristian Wilkerson and Alex Bachman were elevated from the practice squad on Saturday.
Lost in the reporting regarding the likely approval of Tom Brady’s effort to buy a piece of the Raiders is that Richard Seymour’s bid in closing on becoming a done deal, too.
Per a source with knowledge of the situation, Seymour’s arrangement to purchase a limited piece of the team has been approved by the league’s finance committee.
As PFT reported in July, Brady and Seymour had tied their previously separate transactions together. The source says that the Brady and Seymour bids have since been separated again.
Brady’s purchase carries extra baggage, thanks to the conflict of interest from owning part of one team and working for Fox as an analyst for, in theory, games involving any and all teams. The Brady restrictions obviously wouldn’t apply to Seymour.
We’re also told Brady’s purchase isn’t the slam dunk that others have reported. Some owners remain concerned by his role with Fox, as evidenced by the decision to ban him from team facilities, practices, and production meetings on behalf of Fox. If only nine ultimately decline to give Brady a thumb’s up, the deal won’t go through.
Seymour, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, played with Brady in New England. They won three Super Bowls as teammates. The Patriots traded Seymour to the Raiders in 2009, where he spent four seasons.
When it comes to trading receiver Davante Adams, the Raiders don’t have the leverage they’d like. So they’re now trying to create some.
Adam Schefter of ESPN.com passes along the notion that the Raiders might not trade Adams at all.
Sure they won’t.
The Raiders are selling the possibility by pointing out that Adams is a big supporter of new starting quarterback Aidan O’Connell. As if that’s enough to put the Sin back in the City.
The deeper message is that the Raiders don’t have the natural leverage that comes from two teams trying to box each other out. Thus, the Raiders need to conjure the bargaining power that flows from saying, essentially, “Screw it, we’ll just keep him.”
While a mistake born of stubbornness can’t be discounted, it makes no sense. His salary spike to $35.64 million in 2025. The current season will be Adams’s last in Las Vegas, unless he agrees to take less next year. And if the Raiders cut him, they get no compensatory draft pick.
The only way to get anything for Adams — and the only way to stop paying him $983,333 per week — is to trade him. For now, the only way to have a chance to put the squeeze on the one team that wants him (presumably, the Jets) is to pretend they won’t trade him at all.
The other opportunity could come from an injury to a starting receiver with a contending team. There are still four weekends of football to be played until the trade deadline arrives. It’s possible that someone will become desperate enough to give the Raiders what they want, if their best receiver is lost for an extended period of time.
Until then, the Raiders need to pretend that they want to keep Adams and, more importantly, that he wants to stay.
One well-timed and very strategic Sunday Splash! report doesn’t change that.
It’s been nearly two weeks since receiver Davante Adams asked the Raiders to trade him. And the Raiders have now issued him a pair of $983,333 parting gifts.
That’s the amount of each game check paid by the Raiders to Adams. It’s one of the big reasons why, as of five days ago, the Raiders wanted to trade Adams within 48 hours.
They also want a second-round pick. As they wait, they’ll keep paying out $983,333, one week at a time.
Still, patience could pay off. An injury to a starting receiver on a contending team could change everything. And there are still four more weekends of football to go until the trade deadlines arrives on November 5.
Absent a sense of desperation for a team that loses its WR1 and opts not to go “next man up,” the Raiders might have to take the best deal they can get. It’s unclear at this point which team will offer it.
The Jets, Saints, and Steelers reportedly are still in the hunt. The Bills are reportedly “monitoring” the situation.
Along with the rest of us.
On the third anniversary of Jon Gruden’s final game coaching the Raiders, the Nevada Supreme Court breathed new life into his case against the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell.
The reality is that it might take another two or three years to get the case off square one. If it ever does.
The litigation continues to be caught up in the question of whether it will proceed in open court or in the secret, rigged, kangaroo court of NFL-controlled arbitration. The league, obviously, wants to keep everything under its thumb. Gruden wants it all to play out in the light of day.
The trial-court judge agreed with Gruden that he should have his day(s) in court. A three-judge panel of the Nevada Supreme Court found for the NFL.
Now, the Nevada Supreme Court has decided to grant Gruden’s request for a rehearing of the case before the entire seven-justice panel.
It’s simple at this point. At least four of the seven justices will side with Gruden, or at least four of them will side with the NFL and Goodell.
The next step would be the U.S. Supreme Court. For whoever loses, it’s a Hail Mary; the Supreme Court accepts only a small sliver of the cases presented to it. Still, the losing party will likely shoot its shot — especially if the league loses.
The Rams relocation case against the NFL was bogged down for years because the league took the arbitration issue all the way to the Supreme Court. After the Supreme Court decided not to take up the case, it moved toward trial. Before it got there, the league paid out $790 million to settle the case.
That’s the eventual question for the NFL and Gruden. If/when the case ever gets to the point where the NFL must make documents available for inspection and witnesses available for interrogation, will the league make Gruden an offer he can’t refuse?
He supposedly wants to “burn [the NFL’s] house down.” That’s easy to say, unless and until they offer him enough to build his own personal Taj Mahal.
Not many people had access to the emails that were strategically leaked in order to take Gruden out. It didn’t happen accidentally. Someone handed documents first to the Wall Street Journal and then to the New York Times with the obvious goal of making him not the head coach of the Raiders, during a season.
There’s only one way for everyone to know what happened. The case needs to play out in open court. Which means that Gruden first needs to win the battle over litigation vs. arbitration.
If he does, Gruden will need to resist the temptation to accept however many millions the league will offer in order to avoid having a sordid sliver of the underbelly of The Shield exposed for all to see. Will Gruden be able to resist and seek the truth? Or will he take the money and run?
If we ever find out, it won’t happen any time soon.