How Ryan Pace Proved His Mastery With the Khalil Mack Trade

Ryan Pace gets a lot of heat from people even to this day. Despite constructing one of the best rosters in the NFL, he still doesn’t get much of the limelight compared to other GMs. This despite transforming the Chicago Bears from the oldest and most depleted roster in the league into a young, stacked roster capable of a Super Bowl run. To help understand just how good he is, why not look at the biggest move of his young career?

The Khalil Mack trade remains one of the most fascinating in recent NFL history. It isn’t often, especially these days for a superstar to get traded while still in his prime. Whenever it does happen it’s because they have an attitude problem that the team can’t deal with any longer. Such was not the case with Mack and the Oakland Raiders. He’d been holding out of training camp last August over a contract dispute.

Rather than work through negotiations like a normal team would, the Raiders brass was thrown into upheaval by the arrival of Jon Gruden. The man had finally returned to head coaching after a decade away from the sidelines. Not only that, but he came with a 10-year contract and gained full control of the 53-man roster.

That meant Mack’s fate was in his hands.

Unfamiliar with contract negotiations and never one to enjoy paying big money to defensive players, Gruden did the unthinkable. GM Reggie McKenzie, the man who’d drafted Mack, was forced to trade his best-ever pick to another team right before getting fired. The Bears ended up winning that lottery with Pace sending over two 1st round picks, a 3rd round pick, and a 6th round pick for Mack.

People thought it was a fair trade for the most part. However, time has shown that Pace not only won the deal but outright schooled his counterparts in Oakland.

Ryan Pace understood top 5 players are hard to find

Now there is no doubt that the NFL Top 100 list is a bit subjective because it’s voted on by players themselves. Even so, it’s hard to argue with their choice of Mack being the 3rd-best player in the league. Most experts agree with him being somewhere in the top 5. This means Pace got one of the five best players in an entire sport for two 1st round picks and a couple of later round picks. All while getting a 2nd round pick and a conditional 5th round pick in return along with him.

Care to know why this is heist levels of mastery?

Since the league merged into what it is today back in 1970, the Raiders have made a total of 50 picks in the 1st round. Of those, they can confidently say that only four of them, including Mack, went on to become one of the five best players in the NFL. The others were wide receiver Tim Brown, cornerback Charles Woodson, and running back Marcus Allen. It’s also important to note that each of those picks was in the top 10.

So the picks themselves had an 8% chance of becoming a top 5 player according to their history. The fact that the Bears already kept one of those picks outside the top 10 drops those odds drastically. If Chicago continues to have success as expected in 2019, that other 1st rounder won’t either. This means the Raiders would need an astronomical amount of good luck to find a player remotely as good as Mack.

This is why the idea of hoarding money and collecting picks isn’t the perfect strategy it’s cracked up to be. Pace understood players like Mack are rare. If another team is willing to give one up in his prime, almost any price would be worth it.