Oakland Raiders’ Short-Term Pain, Offseason Inactivity Will Equal Long-Term Gain

Lack of free-agent signings and a general offseason inactivity will create some short-term pain within the fanbase. But it's the right path if the Oakland Raiders want to return to relevance again in the long term.

After years of mediocrity, the Raiders finally have a chance to reboot the franchise and turn into one of the best teams in the NFL. They have to follow the right plan, though. That plan will lead into a bleeding of overpaid players' contracts and current talent to make way for future stars.

It will turn one of the worst franchises in the NFL into a truly God-awful franchise for a year or two while the foundation is laid for a better team to rise from the ashes. The short-term pain is just a means to an end as the long-term gains could turn into not just a lot of regular-season wins, but a Super Bowl victory.

The biggest tasks for the Raiders to fix the problems are to clean up the cap situation, build the team the proper way and keep faith that they are headed down the right path. Otherwise, they will just revert to being one of the worst teams in the NFL, yet again.

 



They Can Finally Fix Their Cap Situation By Shedding Al Davis’ Poor Decisions

Year after year Al Davis inundated the Raiders with horrible draft picks, terrible free-agent contracts and poor performance. The Raiders are in year two of the house cleaning, and it's going to get worse before it gets better after it.



The Raiders need to completely fix their cap. They are currently eating over $23 million in dead money, according to Spotrac. There will likely be another $4 million in dead money when Tommy Kelly and Carson Palmer are able to be released in 2014. The Raiders are getting rid of all of their poorly performing talent that is being ridiculously overpaid.

By getting rid of poor decisions Darrius Heyward-Bey, Aaron Curry, Kevin Boss, Dave Tollefson a...

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