Barber: Jon Gruden taking risks in Raiders draft

ALAMEDA - The official agenda said that Raiders general manager Reggie McKenzie and head coach Jon Gruden would jointly address the media when the first round of the NFL draft was finished Thursday night. Before the 32 picks were made though, reporters were ushered into the auditorium at team headquarters. And Gruden, it turned out, was a no-show.

Why? Well, the boss surely remained in the Raiders’ draft room, working the phones and digging into tape on the best available prospects.

If there was any doubt leading into the 2018 draft, there isn’t now. Gruden is calling the personnel shots here.

Gruden isn’t just the head coach. He’s the offensive play caller and the de facto quarterbacks coach. And the Raiders went for offense on Thursday, drafting UCLA offensive tackle Kolton Miller in the first round and trading for former Steelers wide receiver Martavis Bryant. They did it even with their greatest needs on the defensive side of the ball, and despite a wealth of defensive talent staring them in the face.

The Raiders didn’t just bypass defensive talent once. They did it twice. With overall pick No. 10, they could have opted for versatile Alabama safety Minkah Fitzpatrick or massive Washington defensive tackle Vita Vea, two names frequently linked to them in credible mock drafts. Instead, the Gruden/McKenzie tandem - Grudenzie? McKruden? - swung a trade with the Arizona Cardinals and moved back to No. 15, picking up third- and fifth-round picks in the deal.

No problem there. Seemed like a fair trade. And when we got to 15, plenty of defensive talent remained on the board. Like Virginia Tech linebacker Tremaine Edmunds and Florida State safety Derwin James, a pair of impressive physical specimens who had been expected to disappear earlier in the round. Either of them could have strolled into a starting position in Oakland.

Instead, the Raiders pulled a stunner and grabbed Miller. You can see the appeal. He’s a giant of a young man, 6-foot-9 and 309 pounds, and at the scouting combine he ran a 4.95-second 40-yard dash and set a record for offensive linemen with a broad jump of 10 feet, 1 inch. Still, most analysts had the offensive tackle going at the far end of the first round. It was an unconventional pick, and no gift to new defensive coordinator Paul Guenther, who has some holes to fill.

The Raiders weren’t done assembling offensive parts, either. Because they took that third-round pick they had borrowed from Arizona and sent it to the Steelers for Bryant. With Amari Cooper and Jordy Nelson heading a solid pass-catching corps, you wouldn’t have thought receiver was a priority for these guys.

Gruden wants some tools to work with, though. It’s good to be the king.

It wasn’t just the offense/defense thing. The Raiders’ Day One maneuverings revealed another subtle shift in the team’s personnel evaluations. For the most part, the first six years of McKenzie’s tenure here were defined by a reinvention of the Raider image.

When Al Davis was alive, the entire brand was a thumb in the eye of the rest of the NFL. The Raiders were rogues and free spirits and bullies. McKenzie, steeped in the Green Bay Packers operation, changed that. He gravitated to God-fearing, buttoned-down football players with clean records. No, it wasn’t 100 percent. He drafted Gareon Conley in the first round last year while the cornerback still had assault charges pending and, well, there was the Aldon Smith experiment. More often, though, McKenzie was picking up no-maintenance guys like Derek Carr and Amari Cooper and Rodney Hudson.

Suddenly, the Raiders seem more willing to take risks. Their most recent free-agent acquisition was cornerback Daryl Worley, signed on Monday. Worley had been released by the Eagles about a week earlier, after Philadelphia police found him passed out in his car near the team’s practice facility. He allegedly struggled with the cops, who used a Taser to subdue him, and is currently charged with a firearms violation, disorderly conduct and driving under the influence, among other offenses.

Now the Raiders have a new wide receiver, and his baggage can barely fit through the door.

Bryant is a gifted athlete, tall and swift and aggressive on the ball. But he missed the first four games of the 2015 season when the NFL hit him with a four-game suspension for multiple violations of the league’s substance abuse policy. He failed to stay off the weed, and the NFL got him again; this time, Bryant missed the entire 2016 season.

He was back with the Steelers in 2017, and he caught 50 passes. But it wasn’t exactly a happy homecoming. Bryant bristled at the emergence of rookie Juju Smith-Schuster and lashed out at his teammate on Instagram, saying, “Juju is no where near better than me, fool.” Bryant requested a trade. It took them several months, but the Steelers finally honored his request.

“When we talk about character, we’re not going to condemn them,” McKenzie said Monday. “We’re not going to nail them for life, so to speak, if we see some semblance of whether it’s remorse or whether it’s getting on the right path. When you talk to the guy, when we talked to Worley, we feel good about bringing him in. We feel good about giving Martavis an opportunity. We think with our resources, we could help him.”

I’m not insinuating these guys are thugs, or that the Raiders have returned to the rowdy days of Ken Stabler and John Matuszak, or anything that preachy.

But I have a theory. Gruden, as you probably know, is a dynamic personality. No, that’s too mild. He’s a force of nature. He’s a man who thinks he can bend the world to his desires. Coaches like that are more liable to take chances on dubious locker-room personalities, because they believe they can reshape them.

Look at Gruden’s 2000 draft with the Raiders. Their first two picks were kicker Sebastian Janikowski, who had several legal run-ins at Florida State, and pouty wide receiver Jerry Porter. Gruden got production out of both of them. He probably thinks he can squeeze the best out of Worley and Bryant, too.

Gruden, who signed a lucrative 10-year contract in January, has a long, long leash this time around. But he is incurring some risk. If Bryant proves to be a negative force in the Raiders locker room, Thursday’s trade will be a dud. And even if Miller becomes a starter at tackle, his career will now be compared with the likes of Minkah Fitzpatrick, Vita Vea, Tremaine Edmunds and Derwin James. Even kings can be criticized.

McKenzie was answering the questions Monday, but he was talking for the coach. It’s Gruden who is building the Raiders in his image. The glory will be his, or the infamy.

You can reach columnist Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Skinny_Post.