Want to get a sneak peak at Jon Gruden’s approach to defense?

Here, watch a very agitated coach going in full blame the player mode while talking about why the Raiders, a not very good team, traded away Khalil Mack, a very good pass rusher who would have made the Raiders a better team.

“Obviously, Khalil Mack didn’t want to play here,” is Gruden’s actual quote there.

I’m honestly a little taken aback not to hear him blaming “fake news” or similar discourse that’s common in our new Orwellian dystopia.

He made sure to cast Mack as the bad guy for holding out, something fans will no doubt latch onto.

“That’s what’s being missed here. He was under contract, Lisa. He was under contract. He never showed up for an OTA, never showed up for a training camp and it was obvious he wasn’t going to show up for the season. Don’t forget that.”

Gruden’s overlooking a few important facts here.

As of July 26, Gruden had yet to talk to Mack, even so much as a cursory phone call since the team hired him in January. That’s really strange for a new coach not to reach out to his headline players, whatever their contract status.

He even said of Mack in May: “one of the big reasons I came here was to coach that man.” A sentiment which doesn’t completely square with his thoughts on the matter in that ESPN interview.

By the middle of August, Gruden was still telling everyone who’d listen how adamant he was that the Raiders were going to find a way to get Mack a deal and get him back on the field.

Here’s what he said in an interview with SiriusXM:

“Mack’s the best player coming off the edge in football, that’s our opinion. We’re determined to find a way to get him in here and get him a contract and get on with life. He’s a really important person too, he’s a great guy. This is a negotiation, Joel Segal’s the agent, they’ve got their plan, Reggie McKenzie and the people that are negotiating the contract on our end have a plan. I’m coaching the team and at this time he’s not here and we’ve got to focus on what we can control and that’s just working.”

That didn’t square with reality either. Here’s what Peter King reported shortly after the trade:

But between late February and late August, I’m told, the Raiders didn’t aggressively try to resolve the Mack contract issue—not as aggressively as the Rams with Aaron Donald or the Packers with Aaron Rodgers.

There’s another point Gruden overlooks here. It’s not that Mack didn’t want to play for the Raiders. He wanted a new contract. Love it or hate it, holdouts like that are not all that uncommon for players of Mack’s caliber. Not doing so would have allowed the team to apply the franchise tag next season, preventing him from becoming a free agent, and setting up another holdout scenario.

For example, the Raiders will be facing off against Rams all-universe defensive tackle Aaron Donald on Monday night. He held out this summer and through the preseason too, before getting a six-year, $135 million contract.

The Raiders could have also called his bluff. And taken the chance that he’d have come back before sacrificing a year of eligibility for free agency and setting up another contract dispute.

There’s also the possibility that maybe Raiders GM Reggie McKenzie is right, maybe the Raiders just had no way to make the cap work with Mack’s contract demands. Though, I’m dubious. The Raiders have $16 million in available cap space this year, and are projected to have $62 million in cap space in 2019, according to estimates from Spotrac.

The cap has been increasing roughly $10 million a year or more since the new CBA went into effect in 2011. The Raiders are also moving to Las Vegas, with a sweetheart deal on a new stadium there, a move that should only add to the league’s coffers, not to mention the team’s bottom line.

Instead of Gruden castigating Mack for “not wanting to play” for the Raiders, he could have just parroted that party line, conveniently overlooking the fact that finding ways to afford their best players is what good teams do.

It remains to be seen if the Raiders will be a good team this year. One thing’s for certain, it’s going to be a lot harder without a player of Mack’s caliber on defense.