Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

The Raiders are hardly known for their front-office competence, but this trade for DeAngelo Hall is just horrible.  Let me count the ways.  For one, we really don’t need two pro bowl defensive backs.  Sure, it’s nice to have a good secondary, but absent a competent defensive line, it’s not really an area you need to focus on.  Especially considering that the Raiders have already put the franchise tag on Asomugha, Hall is just superfluous.  What’s even more worrying is that the signed Hall to a seven-year, 70 million dollar deal, which on a per-year basis, means they’re paying Hall more than Asomugha.  This is especially insulting considering that Asomugha  only guaranteed to be on the team for another year, at 9.5 million dollars.  So, in all likelyhood, they’ve screwed their chances of keeping Asomugha past 2008.  So what do we get for essentially swapping defensive backs?  Oh yeah, we’ve lost another early round (2nd) draft pick.

What the Raiders front office and Al Davis need to realize is that we don’t have anything resembling a real football team, meaning that one-off free agent signings of skill players isn’t going to do us much good.  Instead, we should be trying our best to get good linemen (the signing of Kwame Harris and Cornell Green helped)  and stocking up on draft picks so that we can build around some good young players.  Instead, the Raiders now only have the 4th overall pick in the first three rounds of the draft.   Great way to rebuild the team.