The Las Vegas Raiders have been on fire this off-season. It's safe to say that new head coach Pete Carroll and new general manager John Spytek are not playing around. We have said it a million times already, but they've already checked two boxes off their list.
Coming into the offseason, the Raiders have a to-do list. They needed to complete the Maxx Crosby extension and hire a quarterback. Crosby is currently the highest-paid non-quarterback in the league, and Geno Smith will wear silver and black in 2025 and maybe for much longer than that.
But, they still have to make moves. They have to put more pieces around Crosby and Smith. Carroll has said a few times now that the plan is to start winning this year, he doesn't see there being a large window to rebuild. The rebuild is this offseason, and the start of the 2025 season is straight into competing. But, that can't happen with making moves in both free agency and the 2025 NFL Draft.
However, to make moves in free agency, you have to have money and cap space. The Raiders have that. After making the early moves they have made, they now have $51 million. But, they messed up along the way.
Raiders cut center Andre James at the wrong time
During the entire Geno Smith news, which was a lot all at once near the end of the day, there was some other news that kind of slipped through the cracks. The Raiders cut one of the last few players remaining that played in Oakland. Kolton Miller, Maxx Crosby, Daniel Carlson, A.J. Cole, and Andre James were the last remaining guys on the team to play at the Oakland Coliseum. On Friday, James was cut.
Yes, he lost his starting job to last year's rookie interior offensive lineman Jackson Powers-Johnson. But, that doesn't mean he couldn't have kicked out to guard if they had an injury somewhere or even be the backup center. He did play guard in college. And, when they cut James, they only saved $1.4 million with a dead money of $7.2 million.
According to Over the Cap, next year the cap saving number would have been $7.1 million with $1.7 million in dead money. It's obvious the right decision would have been to keep him this year, either as a depth guy, especially when you look at the injuries that happened last year to this same team. And, factoring in that they didn't save much money at all makes the decision even worse.
Now they will have to use that money that they saved to get a backup or a guard who probably won't be as good. They had a starting level guy on the bench, and that's a great problem to have.
It's a move that really won't hurt them right now, but for all we know, it could backfire in 2025 during the season, and could have helped even more next offseason. And remember, they are trying to beat out teams like the Denver Broncos and the Los Angeles Chargers for the wildcard spot in the AFC West.
