The Raiders will be playing in Oakland for the 2019 season

The Oakland Raiders needed to find a home for 2019 while they await their 2020 relocation to Las Vegas. They found that home in the city that they’ve played in since 1995: Oakland. The Raiders have reached an agreement with the Coliseum Authority to play one last season in Oakland.

The Raiders have been searching for a new place to play since the city of Oakland filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Mark Davis on Dec. 11, 2018. But their best bet for their interim season all along was staying at the O.co Coliseum for one more year.

On Feb. 25, Ian Rapoport reported that the Raiders have reached an agreement with the Coliseum Authority to return to Oakland for the 2019 season.

The deal will come with a team option for the Raiders, just in case their stadium in Las Vegas isn’t ready for the 2020 season.

That’s no surprise, considering where things were headed earlier in February:

“I will confirm that we, late last week, started sitting down and talking with the Raiders about the potential of a 2019 season deal,” Scott McKibben, executive director of the Coliseum Authority, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “In my view, the discussions have been meaningful and productive.”

But the Raiders took a winding path to get here.

This comes after an attempt to move across the bay, with the San Francisco Giants and the Raiders in previous negotiations to let the Raiders use their ballpark for the upcoming NFL season.

London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco, wasn’t warm to the idea of the Raiders playing in San Francisco, citing congestion issues:

“As far as I’m concerned, the Oakland Raiders should play in Oakland … We don’t need another layer to add to what we already have — and that’s an area that’s really congested filled with construction and will host a number of basketball and baseball games over the coming months,” Breed said, via KTVU.

One of the hiccups with the deal was that the 49ers need to waive their territorial rights before the Raiders could’ve moved to San Francisco. Oracle Park — where the Giants play — is the closest stadium to the city of Oakland that they could potentially have access to.

With Breed publicly against the Raiders moving to San Francisco, that move was taken off the table. Then their choices were down to Oakland or the 49ers’ stadium in Santa Clara, since Santa Clara doesn’t fall under the 49ers territorial rights.

This will give the team another chance to say goodbye before relocating to Las Vegas.