Money No Excuse
The first thing McKenzie did was talk about the Raiders salary cap situation when he was hired but that’s no excuse. Davis was over the cap every year and always got under with some restructures or something to avoid losing his good players. But McKenzie wanted his own players and his own coach even though the Raiders were building something before he got there.
We understand getting rid of guys like Darrius Heyward-Bey, Stanford Rout, and Kamerion Wimbley, but not everyone. But that was the mission as Carson Palmer told Steve Corkran of the San Jose Mercury, “Hue was a good head coach but unfortunately, they decided it was time for him to go and a number of guys that had been there for a while Any of our guys that were making above the league minimum, it was time to cut them.”
So in with Palmer gone, McKenzie wasted 6.5 million on Matt Flynn and had over $60 million in cap this offseason. Instead using it to keep the Raiders’ young nucleus together, he wasted $8 million more on Matt Schaub,$5.1 million on LaMarr Woodley, $4.5 million on Antonio Smith and $3.5 million on Tarell Brown. The message I get from that is, “If Al Davis picked you or brought you in as a free agent, you can’t play!”