City Of Oakland News & Rumors

As the second Jon Gruden era begins in Oakland, the Raiders continue to attempt to gain a foothold in Las Vegas while their new stadium is being built. They are going to play in the Bay Area this season, but beyond that, there are no guarantees just yet.

The team does not have a surefire 2019 home. The Raiders’ lease with the Oakland Alameida Coliseum expires after the 2018 season, but their goal is to remain there for 2019, Vincent Bonsignore of the Orange County Register notes.

While UNLV’s home venue — Sam Boyd Stadium — was once seen as a possible contingency plan in case the Raiders and Oakland could not make a lame-duck situation work, that no longer appears to be the case. Bonsignore writes no temporary stadium solution exists in Vegas, so unlike the Rams and Chargers, the Raiders are sticking around in their longtime market while their domed site is being constructed. The 2020 season has been mentioned as the goal for that stadium’s unveiling, but Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk notes that still isn’t certain.

And if the Raiders are unable to come to terms with Oakland on another lease to play at their 50-plus-year-old stadium for the 2019 season, Bonsignore expects San Diego and San Antonio to surface as possible stopgap home sites.

“As far as the gap between the announcement of the move and the actual moving into the stadium, it’s a tough one,” Mark Davis said, via Bonsignore. “But we want to try and bring a championship to the Bay Area, if we do, that will be fantastic. If we don’t, I can assure you we will have given it all we could to make that happen.”

The Raiders in September 2017 were discussing a lease extension with the city of Oakland for a possible plan to play both the 2019 and ’20 seasons there, in the event a construction delay occurs preventing the team from moving to Las Vegas until 2021. But with those talks being reported nearly 10 months ago, and no such agreement known to have taken place, it adds to the uncertainty surrounding the Raiders’ home following the 2018 campaign.

Davis maintains the eventual exit from Oakland will be agonizing, but he doesn’t regret his decision to relocate after Nevada provided the public funding — a record $750MM — Oakland didn’t.

“It all came down to the public entities and where they felt their efforts should be placed. And obviously we didn’t rank No. 1,” Davis said. “(Oakland) took the approach that why should we give you money? And it was never about them giving us money. And I’ve said that a number of times. All we ever asked for was help to stay in the Bay Area. It’s the most beautiful place in the world. We’ve got the greatest fans in the world up there. But we needed a place that would allow us to compete financially with the rest of the NFL.”

The Raiders are signed to play home games at Oakland Coliseum through the 2018 season, but with their Las Vegas venue not set to be ready by 2020 at the earliest, the team is tentatively expected to stay in the Bay Area in 2019 as well.

However, this franchise may go by the “Oakland Raiders” for longer than expected. The Raiders and Bay Area authorities are discussing an extension to the current lease, with Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports reporting these talks are about staying in Oakland past the 2019 season.

Issues about stadium construction and with the new arrangement with UNLV, which will share the stadium, have induced the Raiders to consider a fourth season as a lame-duck tenant in Oakland. Unlike the Rams and Chargers in Los Angeles, the Raiders aren’t at the point where a delay their stadium’s unveiling is a certainty, per La Canfora. But talks are commencing with Oakland about a post-2019 partnership. Although, it’s still unclear if the sides have an agreement in place for 2019.

“They’re talking about adding on at least one more year in Oakland,” a source informed La Canfora about a possible 2020 season in northern California.

La Canfora reports the director of the Coliseum Commission is open to such an arrangement. However, we heard earlier this year Oakland was considering concluding the sides’ relationship after the 2018 lease expires.

The NFL insider adds the Raiders might be using a lease extension in their current city as leverage in the UNLV talks — which have become somewhat contentious, prompting the university to hire a pricey lawyer to handle negotiations with the relocating NFL team — but at the same time are coming to grips with the fact they may need a stadium solution for the 2020 season.

Derek Carr and the Raiders have a new deal which will keep the quarterback in place through the 2022 season. We know that the new money average on the deal – $25MM per year – is an all-time record, but there are other factors which will dictate the true value of the deal. Naturally, the cash flow and nature of the guarantees will tell us a lot about how Carr did in negotiations, but his reps may have also structured his deal with the Nevada state tax code in mind, as Adam Schefter of ESPN.com tweets. 

[RELATED: Raiders, Derek Carr Agree To Record-Breaking Deal]

California’s state tax rate is 13.3%. Meanwhile, there is no state tax in Nevada. A backloaded deal could make a lot of sense for Carr and allow him to hang on to millions more in income.

We know that the Raiders plan to play their home games in Oakland for the 2017 and 2018 seasons. In 2019, the team could move to a temporary home in Nevada while waiting for it’s new home to be built, but it’s also possible that they’ll extend their stay in Oakland for one more year. It stands to reason that Carr’s team has opted for less money in the first two years of the new deal (’18, ’19) with a step up in 2020, when the new stadium is projected to open.

It’s not just Carr that will be thinking of the Battle Born State when negotiating a new contract with the Raiders. The same will go for any Raider in extension talks, including Khalil Mack, Gabe Jackson, and Amari Cooper, Schefter tweets.

The Raiders received resounding approval to relocate to Las Vegas in March, but the timetable for that trip isn’t certain. And a lease agreement could delay the franchise’s plans.

With the next NFL owners’ meeting occurring later this month, Raiders president Marc Badain said, via Regina Garcia Cano of the Associated Press, if the Raiders can’t reach a lease agreement with Las Vegas, a “distinct possibility” exists the team’s move will be delayed a year. Mark Davis‘ fellow owners must approve the lease before the project can go forward, per Adam Candee of the Las Vegas Sun.

“In order to approve a lease, you need full membership, and the league has four meetings a year: one in March, one in May, one in October and one in December,” Badain said following a public meeting of the Las Vegas Stadium Authority board. “So, if you miss the May deadline, you push to October, we would lose a year, and everybody wants to get this project going everybody wants to get these guys to work. So we didn’t want to miss that deadline.”

The present plan for the Raiders includes a move into their proposed $1.9 billion domed venue in 2020, but if the team can’t agree on a lease by the May 22 owners’ meetings in Chicago, it faces a prospect of this venture being delayed until 2021. Board chairman Steve Hill expressed confidence the agreement can be finalized, per Cano, who adds a 30-year lease is being discussed. A Thursday board meeting is on the agenda, with the subject of completing this lease front and center, Candee reports.

“The NFL has directly asked us to attempt to have a lease approved by the owners meeting,” Hill said. “There has been no ‘get this done or else’ type of approach on this request.”

The Raiders have a lease option to play in Oakland through the 2018 season, although a possible contingency plan — in case this season goes poorly with the lame-duck team playing in front of a fanbase that again saw the franchise agree to leave — may exist that would allow the Raiders to depart the Bay Area early and play in a temporary venue in Vegas. But UNLV’s Sam Boyd Stadium is not viewed as an NFL-ready site presently, so the above delay could conceivably keep the team in Oakland through 2020.

However, the Raiders’ current city may bail before then. The Raiders want to play in Oakland until their Vegas palace is ready, but Candee reports Coliseum authority officials want to end the parties’ relationship after the 2018 season. That would obviously put the Raiders in a tough spot, with one or two in-between years clouding the process.