5 sneaky good trades Raiders made this offseason

You may have seen this headline and was like ‘The Raiders made five trades this offseason?’ Why, yes, they did. More than that, in fact. Even when you remove the Maxx Crosby trade they attempted, but was retracted by the Ravens.

That trade made all the headlines, especially after it blew up. But there were several others that were good deals that also helped remake this team this offseason. We look at the top five.

More than a month before the Raiders went all in on defensive backs in the draft, they landed their starting nickel in a trade with the Buffalo Bills. They sent a sixth round pick to Buffalo (182) to get Johnson. The only catch being that Johnson wants a new contract.

Johnson was entering the final year of a three-year extension he signed prior to the 2024 season. He doesn’t want to go into this season without any job security past that, so he and the Raiders may have to work out another extension. But that doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, honestly.

What they get is a versatile veteran starting nickel cornerback either for at least one season or perhaps more if they think he’s worth adding some years to his deal.

There was no question the Raiders were going to be moving on from Geno Smith after his disastrous season in Las Vegas. Not all of the issues the Raiders had were on him, but he proved that whatever their issues, he was going to make them worse. Whether it was with his poor decision-making on the field, or his poor attitude off of it. The question was whether they would have to cut him or if they could get something in return.

After all, the last time the Raiders were in this position was with Derek Carr and the team ended up with nothing because Carr made sure of it. He used his no-trade clause to nix a trade to the Saints, forcing them to cut him, then signing with New Orleans anyway. And Carr actually had some trade value. After Geno Smith led the NFL in interceptions, who knew whether there would be any interested parties.

It was Smith’s former team in New York who stepped up to get him. The Raiders didn’t get much from the Jets, landing a late round pick swap (228 to 208) in the deal. But it was better than nothing. It certainly helped that Smith would be a cheap addition being that the Raiders would be eating over $16 million in dead money. But that was $2 million less than they would have eaten with an outright release. So, a 20-pick jump in the late rounds and $2 for a player they didn’t want anyway? That’s a pretty good deal.

Entering day three of April’s NFL Draft, the Raiders had the second pick of the day. Sitting on the board was McCoy, who had been a topic of discussion since midway through the first round. That’s where McCoy was projected to go based on his talent. So, he sat atop the best available the rest of the first round, all of day two, and into day three.

By that time word had gotten out that the reason for his fall was a concern over whether he would need an additional surgery on his knee and if that surgery was not successful, his career would be over. But there is also a chance he won’t need the surgery and a chance, if he did, that the surgery would work. And day four is when you take a chance on such things. Especially with a player as talented as he is.

Every team knows this and the Raiders knew that waiting even one spot could mean they lose out on McCoy to another team also looking to jump up and grab him, so they made the deal to jump up one spot, and all it cost was a 2027 seventh round pick. And they may have gotten a starting cornerback out of the deal.

Later in the same round, the Raiders were faced with a similar situation as with McCoy. Here the Raiders were with 33 picks until their next one. It was a pick they had because of the trade that sent Jakobi Meyers to the Jaguars during the season. And there was Washington, the ideal complementary back for Ashton Jeanty from this draft, who was projected to be a day two pick, still on the board. Come the middle of round four, they got aggressive again.

The Raiders had a couple picks in the sixth round and they sent the one they got in the Geno Smith trade to Atlanta to move up from 134 to 122 and landed arguably the third best running back in this class. Thus filling another big need on the team, adding depth behind their former top pick Jeanty and a perfect fit for the zone blocking scheme to intend to deploy.

Good riddance to old rubbish. Man, the annual lies everyone told themselves about Wilson’s value as an interior defender were giving me Clelin Ferrell flashbacks. There were two main problems with the delusions about Wilson. The big one was that the ENTIRE reason he was selected at seventh overall was because of his freakish length and bend around the EDGE. All of which is wasted and useless if he’s lined up on the interior.

The second was that there was just no real proof he was actually developing into a great interior defender. People were just cherry-picking the handful of decent plays he had and ignoring the rest of the time when he was a liability. Instead of just admitting he was a bust and moving on. I gave Wilson the benefit of the doubt early in his career due to his injury recovery. But his slow get off never improved and his physical abilities were being wasted trying to cover it up by moving him inside. It was past time to send him packing, while they had the cap space to eat his dead money and there may still be a team out there who thought maybe they could unlock his potential.

With Maxx Crosby still in-house, the addition of Kwity Paye, and the selection of Keyron Crawford in the third round, the Raiders cut Wilson loose and added a fifth round pick which they used to draft safety Dalton Johnson out of Arizona.

This article originally appeared on Raiders Wire: 5 sneaky good trades Raiders made this offseason