Anyone who saw Khalil Mack on the field this past season for the Chicago Bears is pretty sure the Bears got the better end of the trade with the Raiders.
The Bears gave up first-round picks in 2019 and 2020, a third-round pick in 2020 and a sixth-round pick in 2019 to acquire Mack earlier Saturday.
In return, the Bears also received a second-round pick in 2020 and a conditional fifth-round pick in 2020.
Now it appears maybe the deal wasn’t as great as initially thought for the Monsters of the Midway.
Even though Mack transformed their defense instantly, the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference is giving props to the Silver and Black.
Via The Athletic:
You may have missed it. Well, everybody missed it. The Raiders won an award two weeks ago.
And you will never guess for what.
The Raiders were awarded the Alpha Award for “Best Transaction” by the analytics community at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (SSAC) in Boston.
For the Khalil Mack trade.
The Raiders didn’t believe it either. Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey — founder of the conference and a member of the voting panel — called team president Marc Badain to tell him of the award beforehand.
“Marc thought I was making fun of him,” Morey said in a telephone interview Saturday. “I had to tell him several times that I wasn’t kidding. I guess they took a lot of heat for that.”
Popular convention be damned, the analytics community loved the deal last September, when the Raiders traded their All-Pro pass rusher and a second-round draft pick to the Chicago Bears for two first-rounders…
Those nerds at Sloan are at it again. First they invite @TheAuthletic to a panel, now this. @VicTafur on the Raiders’ award for trading Khalil Mack. https://t.co/OtwSvNRMYG pic.twitter.com/xHfaiCZUTh
— jon greenberg (@jon_greenberg) March 18, 2019
The $90 million in guaranteed money for Mack, the 2016 NFL Defensive Player of the Year, was about $20 million more than Raiders quarterback Derek Carr is being paid.
Mack was the fourth player to be traded after winning a Defensive Player of the Year award, along with Jason Taylor (traded in 2008), Pat Swilling (1993) and Keith Millard (1992), according to ESPN Stats & Information.
At age 27, Mack was the youngest of that group at the time of being traded.
Mack had a nice season with the Bears, recording 12.5 sacks, with one TD and one interception.
Maybe these MIT guys know something we don’t
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