The Las Vegas Raiders floored the rest of the NFL earlier this week when they announced that they were releasing star defensive tackle Christian Wilkins. Various reports are piling in about what exactly went down between him and the team, but this ugly saga is reportedly far from over.
From a football standpoint, however, the team will move on without him. This may seem like a black mark on the new regime, or make people think that the Raiders are in shambles, but it is actually where new head coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Spytek are separating themselves.
Carroll and Spytek are all about football and what helps the team, so if there was no path for Wilkins to return to play, then releasing him seems like a no-brainer. Past regimes for the Silver and Black, however, would not have done the same thing and kept him around because of his lucrative contract.
Christian Wilkins saga proves new Raiders regime is doing things differently
The Raiders have had no shortage of misfires in the draft and free agency over the last decade. Antonio Brown, Chandler Jones, Davante Adams, Jimmy Garoppolo, Gardner Minshew, Cory Littleton and Damon Arnette are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Raiders' roster failures.
Las Vegas' new regime, however, was willing to trim the fat right away and cut its losses. Players like Brown, Jones and Adams were all detrimental to the locker room, and even though all of their stints with the Silver and Black were short, they were still kept around far too long.
Both Littleton and Arnette were complete failures after being added to the roster. But, because of the capital invested in them, they hung around far more than a player at their production level should have. Garoppolo and Minshew were just flat-out poor contracts that the team ate dead cap space for
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This is not how things are operating now for the Raiders, however. If a player is a distraction or deemed not to be fully committed to competing and making their teammates better, then they do not have the privilege to be a part of the team, full stop.
It is a bit of uncharted territory, at least in the 21st century, for the team to be running this tight of a ship. However, if the franchise wants to return to its glory days, they have to change what it's done over the last two decades and mimic the nature of its greatest teams.
Wilkins' departure is certainly frustrating, but Spytek and Carroll did not sign him to that large contract; Tom Telesco did. And the Raiders' current regime refuses to be hindered or controlled by the failed decisions of the organization's previous leadership.