Kawakami: The Del Rio-Raiders growing tension, thoughts on Chip Kelly landing at UCLA (and the 49ers' offset)
By Tim Kawakami 2 hours ago
Reggie McKenzie is safe. That's what I believed from the start of this Raiders downturn and that's what I've heard repeatedly from NFL people the last few weeks.
The Raiders general manager is owner Mark Davis' main and most trusted football lieutenant, and the general sense remains that McKenzie and his staff have done good — if obviously incomplete — work to restock the Raiders roster the last several years.
McKenzie's job is safe, presumably almost no matter what happens the rest of this season and into 2018.
But what about coach Jack Del Rio? That's a slightly different thing. And around the league, it's increasingly a topic of interest.
Note: I'm phrasing this very carefully because nothing has been decided, things can always quickly change, Del Rio has done substantial things for this franchise and might do more, and I won't be at the Raiders game Sunday (I'll be at 49ers-Seattle), so I won't be there for Del Rio or anybody else to discuss or challenge this line of thought.
But I'm still hearing what I'm hearing, and the Raiders are still a vastly disappointing 4-6.
I went into this season — after Del Rio got his new, four-year extension — thinking that it would be almost impossible for Davis to consider firing Del Rio because Davis hand-picked Del Rio in January 2015 then watched Del Rio coach the Raiders to their best result in more than a decade last season.
And by the way, it'd be a lot of money for Davis to eat at a time when he isn't exactly flush with cash.
However … things have gotten so bad, and the relationships inside Raiders HQ are getting so frayed, I now believe that a strong finish this season, starting Sunday against Denver, might be pretty important for Del Rio's relative strength and influence in the organization.
At the very least, Del Rio could lose some of his “first among equals” status alongside McKenzie (and over the rest of the football operations staff) heading into the offseason. Del Rio doesn't run the personnel side or intercede much, but it's been clear from his arrival that he generally gets what he wants in every other area — and it has been mainly a good thing for this often-directionless franchise.
Until now, with all this frustration permeating the franchise, from the owner on down, and Del Rio is the focus of a lot of it.
At the very most, I'm told that the Raiders front office, absolutely including Davis, could start to take a very hard look at how Del Rio has run his staff and whether the players are being put in the right spots to succeed.
Remember, this is a particularly precarious moment for this franchise.
The Raiders are Oakland lame ducks, scheduled to bolt for Las Vegas, but not until the stadium there is completed, in 2020 or perhaps later. Which gives Davis several more seasons to try to keep the crowds pouring into the Coliseum and maintain his cash flow.
There are millions of dollars at stake. So, beyond his clear desire for as many victories as possible, Davis needs this team to continue to excite a local ticket-base that knows the future is all about Vegas. If the Raiders can't win games consistently, then the remaining Oakland seasons could start to get grim financially and emotionally.
Also, just on a practical football side: How many years of Derek Carr (at a very high salary) and Khalil Mack (about to be at a very high salary) do the Raiders want to squander?
Del Rio just fired defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. (probably under pressure from above) and might have to fire offensive coordinator Todd Downing soon enough. Can Del Rio find the right coordinators for 2018 when the coaching world knows he's already under heavy scrutiny? Yes, there is tension everywhere.
Could Davis and McKenzie lure a new coach who could do better? That is the question. I'm not sure they know the answer, but that is the question being asked.
If Davis could afford to pay off whatever's left of the guaranteed money in Del Rio's deal, I'd think Davis would want a coach who could help get Carr and the passing game back on track. It's a competitive market. The proven quarterback-specialists are at the top of the market. There are no guarantees of success even if you land one of those guys.
Del Rio is the bird in the hand. And I still think the lean is to give him one more season to right the ship.
But this dizzy trip to 4-6 has raised the issue, and there are some pressing questions Davis and McKenzie have to ponder in the next few weeks if the Raiders and Del Rio don't get this back on track starting Sunday.
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Chip Kelly is a smart, smart football coach and an offensive leader, and talent will flock to his UCLA program now that he has spurned Florida and other schools and agreed to a deal in Westwood.
He's going to win big there, I'm pretty sure. He's a massive upgrade over Jim Mora Jr. — that is the understatement of the football hiring season.
UCLA also put this deal together in a very smart way; according to UCLA's own announcement, it's a deal that would've been very tough to do without the 49ers, who still owed Kelly upwards of $13-15 million if he had never taken another coaching job.
The 49ers also had an offset clause, which means that any coaching salary paid to Kelly by anybody else gets subtracted from what the 49ers owe.
Here's what happened: UCLA announced that Kelly got a five-year, $23.3 million deal, with a $9 million “reciprocal buyout,” which means that the 49ers are paying $4.5 million of Kelly's salary for the next two seasons.
And UCLA's actual financial commitment, per the announcement, is five years, $13.3 million, which is a helluva deal for the No. 1 coaching target on the market.
This is the 49ers providing the Bruins the chance to pay market-rate for a marquee coach, which they've almost never done in the past.
I've run the numbers and my estimate for the 49ers' total out-of-pocket payment to Kelly, counting their offset with UCLA and also the offset from Philadelphia that the 49ers inherited when they hired Kelly in 2016 … is about $15 million.
For one marvelous season!
There was never going to be a possibility that the 49ers would get out of every penny — or even most of the pennies — remaining on Kelly's deal. But they just got out of about $6 million, and owner Jed York should be pleased by that, while still steaming about that $15 million black hole.
Oh, and UCLA booster Casey Wasserman, who was on the hiring committee and used to run an Arena League team, really could be a great NFL owner some day.
Why wait till the end of the season? Seems like they didn't have a contingency plan in case things went south with him
