Every team has a bad contract or two on their books. Such is life in the NFL. But the key to success in the NFL is limiting the number of bad contracts.
Luckily for the Raiders, there aren’t many “bad” deals on the roster. You can make a case that players such as Lamarcus Joyner or Tyrell Williams are slightly over-paid given their recent production, but it’s nothing too concerning. However, not everyone agrees with that statement.
In a recent piece by Brad Gagnon of Bleacher Report, he named each team’s most overpaid player heading into the 2020 offseason. For the Raiders, he selected right tackle Trent Brown, who the team made the highest-paid tackle in the league last offseason. Take a look at Gagnon’s reasoning for the selection below:
Brown inexplicably made the Pro Bowl despite missing five games and struggling as a run-blocker at right tackle in 2019, but he’s not a good player. He’s a decent pass-blocker who excelled with tremendous support for one year in New England and leveraged that into a blockbuster free-agent deal in the 2019 offseason.
He’s a massive man (6’8″, 380 lbs) who could still grow from a skill standpoint at age 26, but it’s silly that he’s due a $21.5 million salary-cap hit and won’t even protect the blind side in 2020.
While it’s fair to be concerned about Brown’s injury history, being a highly-paid right tackle is no longer a problem in today’s NFL. Many teams move their best pass-rusher around to exploit matchups, so knocking him for where he plays doesn’t make a ton of sense.
There is also no such thing as overpaying to protect your quarterback. In 2018, Derek Carr was sacked 51 times. In 2019, that number improved to just 29 sacks. Brown was a big reason for that improvement and that’s why it’s tough to consider him as a “bad” contract. As Brown gets healthy, look for him to be even better in the 2020 season.
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