Trade deadline passes with Raiders making no moves

Another trade deadline has passed and as per usual so have the Raiders. Reggie McKenzie has long clung to his draft picks, or at least those in the first two days of the draft. Even though outside of Gabe Jackson in 2014 the team hasn’t had a third round pick pan out in McKenzie’s 5-year tenure as GM.

There are a few areas the Raiders potentially could’ve looked for upgrades or reinforcements.

Cornerback is the first position that comes to mine. It’s pretty sketchy right now with Sean Smith falling out of favor and down the depth chart and injuries to David Amerson and Gareon Conley.

Our own Ryan Lipton had an interesting suggestion last week about the Raiders looking to add cornerback Jason McCourty from the Browns.

The difficult part is the issue is mainly the offense right now. And there really isn’t a position on the offense that could be upgraded significantly with a trade. The problem is the coaching and the scheme and they aren’t going to find that on the trade market.

As far as the secondary, they set out to fix it with their first two picks in the draft, but both have been injured through the first eight games of this season. Second round pick safety Obi Melifonwu is expected back this week. Top pick Gareon Conley is still an unknown mostly, with head coach Jack Del Rio hoping to get him back after the bye week.

If Conley does return at that time, along with Melifonwu, that should help the secondary considerably. And they already used high draft picks on them as opposed to sending one away for a temporary fix.

There may not be an addition out there that would fix this team’s issues.