Minor NFL Transactions: 7/18/19
Raiders To Sign G Jonathan Cooper
On the first business day after Richie Incognito‘s suspension was announced, the Raiders moved to add some guard depth and perhaps a stopgap starter. They agreed to terms with Jonathan Cooper, Field Yates of ESPN.com tweets.
The former first-round pick did not come close to living up to his lofty draft slot and was a pre-Week 1 release last year, despite inking a mid-level 49ers deal. But Cooper has started 31 games since being drafted No. 7 overall in 2013 and stands to supply the Raiders with another option at left guard.
Incognito will miss the first two games of this season. Denzelle Good resided as the Raiders’ previous left guard starter. He now figures to compete with Cooper for that role in Weeks 1-2.
Cooper, 29, was a 13-game Cowboys starter in 2017, leading to the 49ers guaranteeing him $4MM last year. They opted to go with Mike Person over Cooper in their starting lineup. Cooper resurfaced with the Redskins late last season; he started four games with Washington.
The Raiders waived wide receiver Montay Crockett to make room for Cooper on their 90-man roster.
Latest On Vontaze Burfict, Raiders
- Marshall and Vontaze Burfict will add veteran presences to the Raiders’ long-understaffed linebacking corps, and DC Paul Guenther said (via NBC Sports Bay Area’s Scott Bair) Burfict’s arrival will free him up to utilize more of his playbook than he did last season. Burfict’s issues will not lie with the former Bengals DC’s playbook but rather staying on the field, which has proved to be a persistent issue for the talented player in his six-year career.
NFL Suspends Raiders’ Richie Incognito
Richie Incognito will have to wait a little while before making his Raiders debut. On Friday, the league suspended the offensive lineman for two games, per an NFL press release. 
The suspension was long anticipated. This ban, in particular, stems from Incognito’s funeral home incident of last year. Incognito pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct stemming from the August 2018 arrest.
According to the arrest report, funeral home employees say the former Pro Bowler wanted his father’s head cut off for research purposes and walked through the funeral home punching caskets and throwing objects. Incognito also made a gun gesture towards an employee and told him that he had guns in his truck. When police searched Incognito’s car, they found a tan Glock 17 9mm handgun, a black Glock 35 .40-caliber handgun, three rifles and four magazines.
Incognito’s off-the-field behavior has been troubling, to say the least, but he could prove to be a strong addition to the team’s offensive line if he stays on the straight and narrow. If he sticks on the roster, he’ll be eligible to debut in Week 3 when the Raiders face the Vikings.
NFL Supplemental Draft Order
The NFL’s Supplemental Draft order does not go by the inverted win/loss records of clubs. Instead, the order is dictated by a weighted lottery that uses a team’s win percentage as just part of the equation. Here, via Tom Pelissero of NFL.com (Twitter link) is the complete order of the supplemental draft:
1. Lions
2. Broncos
3. Jets
4. Cardinals
5. Giants
6. Bills
7. Raiders
8. 49ers
9. Jaguars
10. Packers
11. Bengals
12. Bucs
13. Falcons
14. Vikings
15. Redskins
16. Titans
17. Dolphins
18. Steelers
19. Panthers
20. Browns
21. Ravens
22. Patriots
23.Cowboys
24. Seahawks
25. Eagles
26. Texans
27. Bears
28. Colts
29. Saints
30. Chiefs
31. Chargers
32. Rams
The supplemental draft is conducted via email. If multiple teams submit a pick for the same player in the same round, this order dictates which club gets the player. Of course, any team picking a player in the supplemental draft will sacrifice the corresponding pick in the 2020 draft.
Raiders Sign RB Josh Jacobs
It’s a done deal. The Raiders and running back Josh Jacobs have agreed to terms, according to Michael Gehlken of the Review-Journal (on Twitter). 
Per the terms of his slot as the No. 24 overall pick, it’ll be a four-year, $11.9MM deal for the Alabama product. And, because Jacobs is a first-round pick, the Raiders will hold a team option on a fifth season. The additional year is guaranteed for injury only, giving Oakland flexibility in the event that things do not work out.
Recently, we heard rumblings of a major stall in negotiations between the Raiders and Jacobs. There was reportedly concern that the running back would not show for training camp on July 23, but the two sides apparently worked out a disagreement over the payment schedule of his signing bonus.
It’s a fully guaranteed deal, according to NFL.com’s Tom Pelissero (on Twitter), meaning that the top 24 picks in this year’s draft will have completely guaranteed pacts. That’s an uptick from 2018, when the top 22 got full guarantees.
Jacobs, the first running back to come off of the board in April’s draft, averaged 5.9 yards per carry over the course of his career at Alabama. Evaluators believe that Jacobs has the ideal size and frame to be an every-down back at the next level, though there is concern about his overall speed.
With Jacobs in the fold, all of the Raiders’ draft picks are now under contract. His signing leaves just five unsigned first-round picks around the league: Nick Bosa (49ers, No. 2 overall), Quinnen Williams (Jets, No. 3), Devin White (Buccaneers, No. 5), Daniel Jones (Giants, No. 6), and Brian Burns (Panthers, No. 16).
Rookie WR Hunter Renfrow Could Play Big Role
- Raiders receiver Hunter Renfrow may have been selected in the fifth round of this past year’s draft, but that doesn’t mean the rookie can’t play a big role this season. Scott Bair of NBC Sports Bay Area writes that Renfrow’s savviness and football IQ should help him carve out a role as a slot receiver. However, if the rookie proves that he’s not able to contribute right away, he could easily get passed by veteran Ryan Grant on the depth chart.
[SOURCE LINK]
Negotiations Between Raiders, Rookie Josh Jacobs Not Going Well
The Raiders have just one unsigned pick from this year’s draft class, RB Josh Jacobs. Jacobs is expected to be a featured part of the club’s revamped offensive attack in 2019, but according to Vic Tafur of The Athletic, negotiations between player and team are not going well.
Tafur adds that there is a growing belief that Jacobs will not report to training camp on July 23, when rookies are scheduled to arrive. Of course, since the 2011 collective bargaining agreement, rookie holdouts have become quite rare, given that the contract values and signing bonuses are predetermined. Some first-year players have taken issue with offset language, but Jacob’s concerns apparently involve the payment schedule of his signing bonus.
As the name implies, signing bonuses are fully guaranteed at signing, but as we have seen in the saga of the Seahawks and former second-round draft choice Malik McDowell, the team does not have to pay the full amount of the bonus upfront and instead can pay in installments. So, since McDowell sustained a non-football injury and was ultimately cut, Seattle did not pay him the final installment of his signing bonus and is now suing him to recover another installment.
Although Jacobs is presumably not planning to suffer a non-football injury of his own, it sounds as if he wants to paid a larger chunk of his signing bonus (or all of it) as soon as he puts pen to paper.
Given his background — Jacobs spent some of his childhood homeless and sleeping in a car — that’s easy to understand. But it would also seem to be in his best interests to get this matter resolved and to start seizing control of Oakland’s starting RB job. After all, head coach Jon Gruden has spoken glowingly of Jacobs, and Tafur believes the Alabama product could be the three-down workhorse that Gruden is looking for.
When Jacobs does sign, he will receive a four-year, $11.9MM deal with a $6.7MM signing bonus.
Marcus Simms Works Out For Teams
Former West Virginia wide receiver Marcus Simms worked out for half of the NFL’s teams on Monday, according to Tony Pauline of DraftAnalyst.com. The Jaguars, Saints, Seahawks, Colts, Jets, Redskins, Chiefs, Browns, Eagles, Lions, Packers, 49ers, Vikings, Ravens, Raiders, and Falcons.
[RELATED: The 2019 NFL Supplemental Draft, So Far]
The 49ers and Vikings both sent directors of scouting while the Ravens had their personnel director on hand. The Raiders, meanwhile, had general manager Mike Mayock on hand, which may be an indicator of strong interest.
Simms’ 40-yard-dash times of 4.49, 4.45 and 4.40 seconds were strong, while his 36 inch vertical showed decent hops for the position. While he’s not considered to be as strong of a pro prospect as Washington State safety Jalen Thompson, Simms has a chance at being selected when the NFL Supplemental Draft takes place later this month.
Amari Cooper: Raiders Weren’t ‘Good Fit’
After his first two seasons, Amari Cooper looked like one of the league’s most promising young wide receivers. But inconsistency followed, and the former No. 5 overall pick was never able to recapture his status as a reliable target in Oakland.
Although the up-and-down pattern Cooper set in Oakland persisted during his initial run as a Cowboy, he averaged 80.6 yards per game in his Dallas games after posting posting 46.7 per contest in six 2018 Raider games. Cooper, during an appearance on PFT Live (via the Dallas Morning News), called last season’s scenery change “necessary” for him to reach the heights he did in Dallas.
“I don’t think it was a good fit for me,” Cooper said of his time in Oakland, adding that he reached this conclusion early last season. “I don’t think I was really able to showcase my skills there for whatever reasons. I’ll call it extenuating circumstances. But for whatever reason, I wasn’t able to reach my heights and I kind of knew that I needed to be gone in order to do some of the things that I wanted to do as an NFL player.”
“I felt like there are things that I wanted to do out there on the field during the games, certain plays that I wanted to be called and certain routes that I wanted to run that just weren’t a part of the game plan.”
The Raiders employed three offensive coordinators during Cooper’s three-plus-season stay. Cooper put together back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons under Bill Musgrave in 2015-16 but just 680 in 14 games in Todd Downing‘s offense in 2017. He was on a similar pace in Jon Gruden‘s attack last season, with 10-, nine- and zero-yard outings clouding his two 100-plus-yard showings to start the year.
Cooper has previously said he believed Mark Davis wanted him gone, and although a contradictory report emerged on that topic, the 25-year-old wideout said Khalil Mack‘s trade made him feel less secure about his standing with the Raiders. Cooper and Mack share an agent, Joel Segal. The Raiders drafted safety Johnathan Abram with the pick acquired in the midseason Cooper trade.
“After the Khalil trade, it was like here’s a guy who’s a very dominant player in this league and he’s proven that he’s one of the best players in the entire league and they traded him away,” Cooper said, “so what makes anyone else feel like they’re safe and they’re not tradable? That was kind of the sense in the locker room.”
The Cowboys and Cooper are currently working on an extension, though talks hit a stalemate last month and may be on hold until Julio Jones (and possibly Michael Thomas) help clear up what figures to be a new-look receiver market. Cooper has said he would be comfortable playing this season without an extension in place.