Jon Gruden would like you to trust the process

Jon Gruden doesn’t care about winning in 2018. He’s not especially invested in 2019, either. And while that sucks for Oakland, it could work out pretty well for Las Vegas.

The veteran head coach was brought back to the sidelines with one goal in mind; make the Raiders look good for their scheduled move to Las Vegas in 2020. With an unprecedented 10 year, $100 million contract, he’s got plenty of runway to get there — and plenty of time to trust the process.

On Monday, Gruden orchestrated his latest stunning departure from the Raider roster. Amari Cooper, a 24-year-old two-time Pro Bowler and the No. 4 overall pick of the 2015 NFL Draft, was shipped to the Cowboys in exchange for Dallas’s first round selection in 2019. Before that, it was a blockbuster trade that pushed All-Pro pass rusher Khalil Mack out the door in exchange for a pair of first round picks from the Bears.

These two deals came on the heels of releases for players like Michael Crabtree, Marquette King, David Amerson, and Obi Melifonwu. And thanks in part to the holes they’ve left behind, Oakland has been left to struggle to a 1-5 record to start its 2018. The Raiders’ lone victory came in overtime in Cleveland in a game Gruden probably didn’t deserve to win.

But wins are secondary to premier draft picks and the expanding gulf of salary cap space the club is building for its future. Gruden is perfectly fine sacrificing multiple years of a decent roster in a quest to build a contender that can sell tickets once the team lands in the Nevada desert. It’s a risky strategy — but hell, it worked for the Philadelphia 76ers.

Gruden looked at the 2018 version of the Raiders and deemed them closer to a nadir than the franchise’s post-2002 peak of 2016, even with many of the same players from that 12-win season. That included Derek Carr, the MVP candidate whose broken leg had dashed the team’s Super Bowl aspirations. Behind him was a 2016 all-star team; Oakland had the league’s defensive player of the year in pass rusher Mack, two 1,000-yard receivers in Cooper and Crabtree, and an All-Pro punter in King.

As Week 8 approaches, Gruden’s roster trimming means only Carr remains, and he’s far removed from the 28:6 touchdown-to-interception ratio of his breakout year. But that 2016 success was always going to be out of reach, even without Gruden’s cuts and trades, thanks to an aging roster and the team’s inability to draft new stars. One of the league’s most dangerous tailback platoons, anchored by Latavius Murray, DeAndre Washington, and Jalen Richard, had been chopped down to an ineffective Richard, an aging and now injured Marshawn Lynch, and Doug Martin.

2016 leading tackler Malcolm Smith is now a 49er. Pro Bowler Reggie Nelson is 35. Bruce Irvin will soon turn 31.

That left Oakland with a very defined ceiling. Extending Mack and Cooper would have bumped it up to “playoff threat,” but wouldn’t have made the Raiders a true contender thanks to a recent history awful drafting and questionable free agent decisions. So Gruden took the opportunity to rebuild from the ground up and mold the soon-to-be Vegas Raiders in his own image.

Just like Hinkie did with the NBA’s 76ers.

Hinkie, Philadelphia’s general manager from 2013 to 2016, dismantled a roster that, at its best, could sneak into the playoffs but never make any real noise. He traded away players like All-Star point guard Jrue Holiday, former rookie of the year Michael Carter-Williams, and starters/contributors like Thaddeus Young and Evan Turner. In return he picked up a litany of first- and second-round picks in hopes of attracting young superstar talent to a team that hadn’t been as far as the conference finals since 2001.

This led to some lean years as a young team devoid of veteran talent cratered to some of the league’s worst records, but that struggle also created some incredibly valuable draft position. Hinkie’s tanking brought stars like Joel Embiid, Dario Saric, and Ben Simmons into the fold. His dedication to amassing draft assets at the expense of proven players gave the Sixers the leeway to swing and miss on top prospects like former top-three picks Markelle Fultz and Jahlil Okafor.

It worked. The 2017-18 76ers were the franchise’s first 50+ win team since 2001. They’ve currently got the sixth-best odds to win the 2019 NBA title. And that’s the kind of turnaround on which Gruden is staking his reputation. The good news is, he’ll have plenty of time to see it through.

The fatal flaw to Hinkie’s plan was lacking the name value to stick around and see out Philadelphia’s transformation from bottom-feeder to contender. His vision was undermined in 2015 when the Sixers brought Jerry Colangelo to town as the club’s Chairman of Basketball Operations and Hinkie eventually resigned in the spring of 2016. He’s currently working with the Broncos’ front office as an analyst.

Gruden won’t have that problem. He’s locked in to a 10-year, $100 million contract that makes him as un-fireable as any head coach has ever been. His general manager, Reggie McKenzie, has been a willing rubber stamp to any move he’s made. And his prior run as Oakland’s head coach, which resulted in 38 wins over four seasons, gives him a little extra credibility and goodwill with the Raider faithful.

That’s given him the opportunity to clear the deck in order to build an exciting young roster in advance of the team’s move to Las Vegas. Gruden’s decision to trade two bonafide young stars in order to secure the draft picks that could become bonafide young stars seems contradictory, but it makes sense from a financial standpoint. Mack and Cooper are slated to make more than $36 million in 2019 alone for their new teams. In their place, the Raiders will pay the picks they received something in the market of $5.4 million for the two rookies they’ll select next spring.

And those rookies are the wind who can push the team’s next wave of greatness, both on the field and on the salary sheet. A bad Raiders team is barreling toward the top pick in this year’s draft; every team but the Giants, 49ers, and Cardinals has more wins than they do. Their 2019 pick from the Bears currently projects to the No. 17 selection. The pick they received from Dallas for Cooper is currently No. 10 — though it will get less valuable if the Cowboys’ new wideout can be the NFC East-winning godsend Jerry Jones thinks he can.

Having three first round picks in a single draft is rare. Having three inside the first 20 picks is virtually unheard of. And with the right picks, Gruden will have the opportunity to select the future stars that herald his franchise’s return to greatness. Those 2019 picks will have a full season to prove their worthiness before the team’s planned move to Las Vegas Stadium. And when the novelty of just having an NFL team wears off in Paradise, Nevada, those are the players who will be counted on to sell tickets and make the Raiders’ latest relocation look like a smart idea.

Part of why Mack and Cooper became part of the team’s fire sale was Oakland’s inability to build a supporting cast around them. It’s telling that many of the Raiders’ top performers in 2018 — Jordy Nelson, Marshawn Lynch, Bruce Irvin, and Tahir Whitehead foremost among them — aren’t homegrown players.

A quick glance at the team’s recent day one and two draft picks shows why the club has been so reliant on imported players who are either nearing or already past age 30. Oakland struck gold with Mack and Carr in 2014.

2015 brought Cooper, but also Mario Edwards and Clive Walford, two underwhelming performers who were cut by Gruden in 2018.

2016 marked the arrival of Karl Joseph (zero starts in 2018, currently on the trading block), Jihad Ward (cut), and Shilique Calhoun (zero career starts).

The jury’s still out on 2017, although second-round pick Melifonwu was so lightly regarded that he cleared waivers before making his way back to the club’s injured reserve list.

That’s a grim resume, but none of those picks came under Gruden’s advisement. After all, his four years at the helm in Oakland brought Charles Woodson and ...uh, Sebastian Janikowski? Shane Lechler? Roderick Coleman?

So yeah, those picks might not work out. Gruden spent four years as the team’s head coach, and during that tenure the first rounders that followed Woodson were:

Were those picks influenced by an increasingly crusty Al Davis? Almost certainly. Still, they don’t exactly bode well for Gruden, whose track record with the Buccaneers wasn’t exactly impressive.

If those 2019 and 2020 picks don’t turn into stars, at least they’ll be cheap. The Las Vegas Raiders are slated to have boatloads of cap space in 2019 and beyond, including more than $100 million for that 2020 move to the desert. Factor that in with a brand new facility, a likable, high-profile coach, and a destination tailor made to attract free agents and you’ve got another viable pathway to a championship roster.

Gruden says he’s done trading. He also denies he’s in the midst of a tank.

“We’re not trading anyone else,” Gruden told ESPN’s Chris Mortenson after the Cooper deal. “We’re trying to stay competitive and figure out a way to compete this next game (in Week 8 against the Colts).”

But he also said he didn’t know anything about reports the club was shopping Cooper eight days before freeing him from Oakland. And the fact he suggests his 1-5 team is currently “competitive” seems like another hint we shouldn’t take his quotes at face value. The Raiders still have expensive deals for soon-to-be veteran free agents like Bruce Irvin and Donald Penn on their books, and either could be an attractive addition for a budding contender before the October 30 trade deadline.

Gruden’s free agent record in 2018 suggests this was the plan all along. After shedding players like Amerson and Crabtree, he signed a litany of veteran players to short-term, mostly low-cost deals that provided plenty of salary cap space for 2019 and beyond. While the Mack trade was a surprise — even Gruden still seems to struggle with it — the only real shock behind Cooper’s exit was that the Cowboys were willing to part with a first round pick in the process.

And that’s exactly what year one of the re-Gruden era has been in Oakland; a process. The veteran head coach tore down a decent one in hopes of building something great, and now he’s got the assets to pull it off. He’ll just have to prove he’s a better judge of young prospects than he was in his first go-round with the Raiders in order to turn potential into a product Las Vegas will fall in love with.