ALAMEDA - Darren McFadden is (officially) a Raider.
Lane Kiffin looked relieved.
McFadden and family were all smiles.
And every front office person from the Raiders looked happy that the contract is done.
It's six-year deal for $60 million with a little more than $26 million guaranteed.
You'll read about the "actual" guarantee being $19.6 million. Here's why:
The extra $6.4 million is part of a "fall of the log" bonus. Basically if McFadden plays as much as expected, he'll have no problem hitting the minimum requirements for the bonus to kick in during the contract.
Here's what some of the key figures had to say at today's press conference:
McFadden on when he knew he'd have a deal completed:
"I didn't know it was going to get done yesterday until about 8 or 9 o'clock at night, when I got the phone call; my agent called me and told me I needed to come over and get ready to sign the papers. My family came over with me. Al Davis came down, and he supported me. That was a great thing. I'm glad he came and did that. It was just a great deal that we got it all out of the way."
On how he'll act around veterans that he now makes a whole lot more money than:
"I just go in there being humble about it. I'm not the type of person that's going to be in there with a big head, or bragging, or anything like that. I feel that's one of the things that's helped me out a whole lot because I'm a very humble person. I feel like the whole team has embraced me."
On house hunting:
"I feel like I'm getting closer to finding one, it's hard, though for me still because, being from the south, the land out here is totally different. Out here, it's so, I'm looking and trying to find one."
On any planned celebrations:
"I don't have any plans right now. I'm still trying to enjoy my family while they're here because they've got to get back out of town, so right now I'm just trying to enjoy it with them."
McFadden's agent, Ian Greengross:
On was he surprised things went smoothly:
"I don't like to put expectations on it because then, if you say, 'It's the Raiders, it'll never get done,' then it won't get done. I came in with my research and my numbers. We sat down and we took it kind of hour by hour. Did we make progress each hour? Did we hit a brick wall? Are we going backwards? And we seemed to make progress. We hit a bunch of brick walls but we never really took a huge step backwards at any point so I stayed Wednesday night. Same thing yesterday and finally late last night we were able to get it done."
When asked if he heard horror stories last year:
"It's never easy. In the sense of these types of negotiations, there was no issue that said to me, 'Wow, I can't believe what happened last year' but every negotiation is separate. That's not to say last year they were unfair to JaMarcus or vice versa. But this year in dealing with me, I think given their experience last year certainly helped us out in terms of making smoother progress. But it was still make progress, hit a wall, just like any other team. I wouldn't say it was any better, I wouldn't say it was any worse. The guys I dealt with -- Marc Badain, Tom Delaney, Dan Ventrelle, Amy Trask and of course, Mr. Davis -- everyone of them at some point, it was a good thing. Whether we kept taking a step forward or not, it never became to a point where OK, that's it, which is why I kept staying around."
On whether Jake Long (first overall) and Matt Ryan (third overall) having deals done helped:
"We kind of looked at those but kind of not because there's a big gap between three and four. So even though three was done, it wasn't really a model for us. We still had to kind of look at our own stuff. I had some ideas, they had some ideas. They liked some of my ideas, they hated some of mine. I liked some of theirs."
Coach Kiffin:
"The last thing we wanted to do with Darren because of our ideas with him was to go into a holdout and for him to miss any time in training camp. What I think shows a lot about Darren is the fact that Darren felt the same as we did. Darren knew how important it was for him to get in here and show us his love for football and his passion for the game and his passion to get into training camp and to have a great first year and not have any setbacks."
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Just on a side note, many of you will find it funny that McFadden's financial advisor is Mike Vick. No not the on in jail that had dog fights at his house.
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I don't know about the rest of you, but I'll be at Monday Night Raw in Oakland. So will some of the Raiders. Should be fun.
And I'll promise not to write anything bad about a Raider that is also a WWE fan (well I can't really do do that).
And yes, I know it's "fake" but I love it.
After that, I've got some vacation coming up. Southern California here I come.
--Jason Jones
@Nyx.CommentBody@