Analysis: How the Raiders will arrive in Las Vegas as Super Bowl contenders

By Case Keefer (contact)

Wednesday, March 29, 2017 | 2 a.m.

For sports fans in Las Vegas, perhaps the only downside to the confirmation of the Raiders’ move earlier this week was having to endure an influx of half-witted gambling and Elvis jokes.

Locals should do their best to ignore the bland quips and hackneyed punch lines from fans of future opponents. Las Vegas will have its laughs once the games start.

Our city’s team is going to win, baby.

Some have suggested that as great as it will be to have an NFL team, the nomadic franchise will never truly feel like it belongs to Las Vegas. That implies an expansion team would have been preferable.

Forget that nonsense. Who asks for growing pains?

It’s much better to corral a fully formed giant, and that’s exactly what the Raiders should resemble when they move into their new digs in 2020.

Now, in fairness, the Raiders are only three years removed from extending an ignominious 11-year stretch by going 3-13 to fill their usual spot as one of the worst teams in the league. That alone could be used as reason to regard looking three years into the future as a fool’s errand in a league that inherently produces so much roster turnover and so many unforeseen variables.

The case against projection may look even stronger when it comes to a team like the Raiders, considering they have allocated the fourth-lowest amount of money of any team in the league for the 2020 season, according to overthecap.com. Only three players — All-Pro guard Kelechi Osemele, cornerback David Amerson and punter Marquette King — are currently under contract for the season the Raiders are supposed to arrive.

But that’s by design. The Raiders didn’t go on their once-customary free agent spending spree this offseason because locking up players long-term from outside the organization would have likely proven counterproductive.

In reality, much more of the Raiders’ 2020 roster resources are earmarked than it appears. They want one of the NFL’s most exciting young nucleuses — quarterback Derek Carr, linebacker Khalil Mack, wide receiver Amari Cooper join Osemele to form a de facto Big Four — to lead the transition into Las Vegas.

And with Carr, Mack and Cooper all set to come off their rookie deals in the interim, that’s going to cost a lot of money. But to keep the Raiders in Super Bowl contention, as this group of four players ranging from 22 to 27 years old should do, it’s going to be worth every cent.

Carr took a major step forward last year in his third season, notably chopping his interception rate in half while maintaining a 7 yard per completion average. With the Raiders sitting at 12-3, he was in MVP contention before breaking his leg.

Mack, Carr’s 2014 NFL Draft classmate, brought a trophy back to Oakland instead by winning the Defensive Player of the Year award. Cooper finished third in Offensive Rookie of the Year voting two years ago, and finished eighth in the NFL in receiving yards last season.

And Osmele graded out as the Raiders’ top offensive player, according to Pro Football Focus, as the central force of one the league’s best lines.

That core is a big reason why the Raiders are the fourth choice by the odds, 12-to-1, to win next year’s Super Bowl. Despite the fact that they could all be hitting their primes together concurrent with the move to Las Vegas, the Raiders’ championship chances could conceivably get more difficult.

Add the $11.2 million Osmele is slated to make in 2020 to even conservative estimates of the money Carr, Mack and Cooper will command and the quartet may account for a third of the Raiders’ cap space. That’s not a lot of cash to spread around to the other 49 players who will make up the roster.

It’s going to take some shrewd front-office work to keep the Raiders in a strong position. This is where it’s worth mentioning that General Manager Reggie McKenzie is scooping up Executive of the Year awards for overseeing the Raiders’ transformation.

McKenzie has emphasized having a long-term plan, and staggering the contracts of his superstars could be one way that allows the Raiders to not be too constrained by the salary cap — which, favorably, has increased by at least $10 million in each of the last four years. But his most important test will come in the draft, where the pressure to uncover bargains only increases with the inevitable advent of the big contracts.

The Raiders’ overall success in the draft under McKenzie remains in question. Although they clearly scored quite the haul in 2014 with solid contributors like guard Gabe Jackson and defensive tackle Justin Ellis to go with Mack and Carr, other drafts have borne out less fruitfully.

McKenzie still gets criticized for using his initial first-round draft pick in 2013 on cornerback D.J. Hayden, who was supposed to contribute to moving the Raiders’ pass defense up the ranks but has more inhibited them from doing so.

It was during that same offseason that McKenzie made an unprecedented move by releasing a slew of high-priced veterans and going into the year with $55 million of dead money, or just short of half the salary cap. That commenced an all-but-official rebuilding period over the next two seasons.

Oakland fans stayed loyal throughout. It’s unjust that they tolerated more than a decade of hardships only to be at least partially denied of a payoff that could come in the form of several years of competitiveness.

But that’s a win for Las Vegas, which might have landed the Raiders at the perfect time. For the rest of the NFL, it’s no joking matter.

Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.