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Since making the Superbowl in 2002, the Oakland Raiders have consistently been one of the worst teams in the NFL. In many respects they are in a similar predicament to the NRL’s Canberra Raiders.
It is well publicised that Canberra have a hard time pursuing big-name players. James Tedesco’s backflip on a $600,000 contract this week illustrates that point brilliantly.
Despite massive amounts of money under the salary cap, the Canberra Raiders simply cannot convince players to leave their Sydney based clubs and join on with them.
Apart from the comparatively dull lifestyle of Canberra, players must surely look at Canberra’s history of losses over the past few years and wonder whether the money is worth it.
The Oakland Raiders had precisely the same problem.
They have been one of the NFL’s worst in recent years and that record was detrimental to their recruitment efforts. Oakland often paid far too much money to attract good players to their team.
As a result, the overblown contracts meant Oakland couldn’t sign other valuable – but more importantly cheaper – players to their roster.
So while they may have had a handful of very talented players, as a whole their team wasn’t very good.
It didn’t help that former owner Al Davis fired his coaches on an almost yearly basis, was instrumental in overpaying players, and wasted high draft picks on untested college players who displayed freakish athletic talent.
However, the future is bright for Oakland.
Al Davis passed away a few years ago, and with his passing went the massive contracts, and the high draft picks spent on unknown players.
The Raiders now have a General Manager by the name of Reggie McKenzie, who according to many experts is doing a sterling job in Oakland.
He wants to win, but for the right price.
This means he signs players for their worth, and does not overpay.
Slowly but surely he is putting Oakland on track to at least be competitive for the first time in more than a decade, which in turn, will help convince players to sign with them.
The Canberra Raiders have a chance to do the same as Oakland, and the lesson to be learned from their American cousins is not to overspend.
Terry Campese is a prime example of how big spending can hurt a team.
Campese essentially spent two years on the sidelines through various injuries.
The Raiders didn’t just lose Campese’s talent, but also the cap space they had spent on him, essentially playing two seasons with a smaller salary cap than the rest of the competition.
Which leads us to Tedesco’s contract.
He is very talented, just like Campese, but is yet to play a full season of first grade because of injuries.
It may be that Tedesco never misses another NRL game again, in which case the Raiders probably have missed out an exciting talent.
At the same time, however, they may have avoided paying too much money to a player who will spend a lot of time off the field.
With most of the big names the Raiders were pursuing recently deciding to go other ways, the Raiders should, in my opinion, resist the temptation to use some of their massive cap space to overpay for players who are not worth their contract.
If the Raiders think they can sign a player who will have a positive impact on their team, they should sign him.
However, they should sign him for the right price, irrelevant of the fact that Canberra is, for many players, an undesirable location.
The ramifications of overpaying may not immediately be felt, but somewhere down the line, the Raiders could miss out on a talented junior, or a big-name player, because of overpaying players.
By exercising responsibility when it comes to the salary cap, Canberra can build a team capable of winning matches consistently.
With that consistency, the Raiders will find it easier to lure players, and if they have exercised responsibility in regards to the salary cap, they will be able to outbid all the other clubs to sign their coveted player.
It is possible to do it, the work being done in Oakland by Reggie McKenzie is proof of that, the Raiders simply need to resist the temptation to win now, and instead build a team capable of winning for a long time in the future.
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