Vic Tafur of the San Francisco Gate reported that Oakland Raiders left tackle Donald Penn is going back to the team. This comes after a held out for top-10 left tackle money for all of training camp. The Raiders offensive line playing so well destroyed what little leverage he may have thought he had.
At the beginning of this holdout, I wrote an article to say that Penn has no leverage in the deal. Penn is outperforming his contract but general manager Reggie McKenzie doesn’t negotiate with players with deals and don’t report to camp. Players coming off their first outstanding season at 34 like Penn don’t usually get huge contracts.
And he can’t afford to miss the game checks that he would get once the regular season first. As far as camp goes, it’s not a big deal at all that he wasn’t there with all of the experience he has. It was probably good that he wasn’t at camp to save some wear and tear on his 34-year-old body.
In his absence, the Raiders got a chance to find out what life without Penn, which may be soon, will be like. Free agent pickup Marshall Newhouse and fourth-round pick David Sharpe played well. According to Vic Tafur of the San Francisco Chronicle McKenzie is open to a raise for Penn but not before he reports to the team.
So in comes Penn, just in time.
He’ll probably play in the third preseason game, the important one, this week and be ready for the season opener. They say that all is well that ends well and in this case, it ended very well. Some other OTs got some good reps in camp that wouldn’t have while Penn rested his body.
I hope McKenzie gives him that raise so it will truly be win, win.
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