To succeed at anything takes investment and sacrifice. For too long The Raiders have been a leverage piece/bargaining chip in free agents quest to get a max deal from a winning franchise. The..." for PepsiTo succeed at anything takes investment and sacrifice. For too long The Raiders have been a leverage piece/bargaining chip in free agents quest to get a max deal from a winning franchise. The reality is the Raiders organization has been run like an investment firm and not a football team.In order to rescue itself from salary cap purgatory Womens Antonio Brown Jersey , a frugal and methodical approach to personnel was applied. Attacking free agency and draft picks like a middling mutual fund portfolio. Getting a great return on the initial investment, but becoming stagnant, and lacking in growth since the 2017 seasonLuxury cars are items which aren’t cost effective and require a lot of maintenance in order to be running at optimal performance. Star players are not much different, between ego massages, the antics and oddities of the football gifted, they deliver memorable moments in franchise history.Mark Davis general manager Mike Mayock and coach Jon Gruden truly want to win, and they know they can’t afford to be cheap. Should they throw money at just anyone...that’s not what should be gathered from this. Rather, they should identify the best of the best and back up the Brinks truck to pay them. Mr. Big ChestIt has been reported the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Raiders have reached a verbal agreement to trade Brown for a 2019 3rd and 5th round pick. The Raiders are waiting for the open of the 2019 league year, on March 13th to finalize the mega-trade for iconic wide receiver Antonio “Business is Booming” Brown. Pirates search for treasure chests, and Raiders pillage just for fun. Browns threatened holdout/retirement has resulted in a reworked 3yr/$50.1M, $30.1M guaranteed deal with the Raiders averaging $16.7M per year, and the best part about it is the Steelers are still on the hook for $11M in 2019. Brown emerges from this trade as the ultimate winner. The Raiders pulled the trigger on a trade with the Pittsburgh Steelers for the best receiver in football since 2011. The final snag was whether or not the Raiders were going to give him a new deal. If anyone was worth what they asked it would be Brown, his production and standing as the number one wide receiver since 2011 is without question. As it stands with a deal pending for guard Kelechi Osemele to the Jets, the Raiders have swapped Amari Cooper for just a third round pick. Blindside on LockdownAnd the hits just keep on coming early and often. The front office is moving at a speed which is faster than the rest of the league. Nine minutes into the legal tampering period the Raiders reached an agreement to pay OT Trent Brown a record-setting 4yr/$66M contract with $36.75M guaranteed to become their left tackle.When you have the best receiver in football and are trying to sign the most dynamic player from scrimmage the best blocking is required. Future TransactionsTrading KO who has no dead money remaining on his deal frees up another $10.2M against the salary cap. From there one can infer the Raiders intend to move guard Gabe Jackson back to his original left guard position and extend re-signed guard Denzelle Good, a shot to start next to Kolton Miller Antonio Brown Jersey White , who moves to right tackle with the addition of Trent Brown. It’s also a strong belief there will be a draft pick or two, possibly even one of Gruden’s Senior Bowl offensive lineman added as well. What Raider fans should keep their fingers crossed and draw unsubstantiated parallels from is the fact Brown is best friends with free agent running back Le’Veon Bell.The Need for Speed and toughnessIn today’s NFL everyone needs premiere talent and if you don’t draft it you have to overpay for it. The Oakland Raiders desperately need to get bigger, stronger, faster and younger players. The only way to acquire these types of players is to pay them more than anyone else, or scout the draft talent pool more closely and value things like size and speed.The safe approach has safely been proven ineffective and kept an organization known for being “A villain big and bold” into some relative nice guys. Raider brass knows it needs to do something else in order to beat the teams in their division.The Raiders are doing their homework on players and searching for premium value in free agency. No expense will be spared and remember Mayock has said we need to surround Carr with weapons. Raiders rookie receiver Hunter Renfrow had a long and productive college career at Clemson, but early on he didn’t look like a player who could make it to the NFL.Clemson coach Dabo Swinney told NBCSportsBayArea.com that when Renfrow showed up as a walk-on, he was nowhere near ready to compete at the college level, let alone the NFL.“The thing with Hunter is, you know, he was 150 pounds. He was athletic, but he was weak,” Swinney said. “He literally, literally benched 125 pounds when he came to Clemson. He’s a three-sport athlete, he was never in the weight room, you know he was always twitchy and fast Bo Jackson Jersey White , but never in a million years would you think he’s a football player if you just walked up. Sometimes we get blinded by how people look, we judge that book by its cover, but the game of football, if it was just about size and strength and running fast, we’d just go over to the track and sign everybody. The game of football, you still have to be a football player. That’s one of the key things in our evaluation is: Is he a football player? You can’t just look the part. You’ve got to be able to play the part. Hunter is one of those guys. We didn’t offer him a scholarship, but we certainly recruited him as a preferred walk-on because we saw some potential.”Eventually Renfrow did enough work in the weight room that he benched 225 pounds for seven reps at the Scouting Combine, and more importantly he made a major impact on the field.“Football players come in all shapes and sizes — they really do — at the end of the day you got to be able to play between the lines, and he is the epitome of that, for sure,” Swinney said. “When he puts that helmet on I don’t know what happens, he becomes Superman. It’s like Clark Kent taking his glasses off or something. He just has a gift to be able to play the game, and he’s still not anywhere close to a finished product.”Whether Renfrow has ability to keep it going in the NFL remains to be seen, but Swinney is confident in Renfrow’s track record of exceeding expectations.