The Las Vegas Raiders chose Matt Millen to announce their Day 2 picks, but he's one of the worst GMs ever.
One of the reasons the Las Vegas Raiders are so intriguing to cover is that they somehow manage to do the wrong thing even when they have the right intentions. We could write a book about this sort of thing, maybe even an encyclopedia set, but let’s focus on this week’s draft for the latest example.
Every team trots out former stars and Hall of Famers to announce its picks on Day 2 and Day 3, and the Raiders are no exception. But their decision to have former linebacker and GM Matt Millen announce all of the team’s Day 2 selections is an all-time howler, mostly because Millen is universally acknowledged as one of the worst GMs ever, and some people think it’s not particularly close.
This is where the good intentions enter the picture. Millen had a fabulous career as a linebacker for the Raiders, to the point where he’s in the team’s Ring of Honor. He won a Super Bowl with the Raiders, not to mention three others with two different teams, and he was known as one of the toughest linebackers ever to play for the Raiders, which is saying something.
Now for the bad part. After Millen retired, he became the GM of the Detroit Lions from 2001-2008, when the Lions were a joke of a franchise.
Millen certainly did his part to contribute to that, as he was the mastermind who put together the Detroit team that managed to go 0-16 in 2008, which was the first time that had ever been done at the time. Millen had an in with then-owner William Clay Ford Sr., and he became the ultimate example of an ex-player who never should have been hired for that role. Lions fans actually held protests and chanted to get Millen fired, but it took forever to happen.
Here’s the logic that led to this happening. The Raiders love to trot out their stars from the glory days, especially lately given how bad they’ve been. On that level Millen isn’t a bad call, but this is the draft. That means the guy in the spotlight is the current GM, John Spytek, who’s been taking all kinds of heat for last year’s bad draft and is under all kinds of pressure to nail this one.
Now Millen will be at the podium for those Day 2 picks, which will be a remind of how bad things can be when his performance is connected to Spytek’s. It’s a small thing in the big picture, but it’s also a great example of how the Raiders consistently whiff at this sort of thing.