Like the Justin Tuck deal, the money is about right here for LaMarr Woodley. He was overpaid in Pittsburgh and he isn’t the same player he was in 2010, when he graded out as Pro Football Focus’ 5th ranked 3-4 outside linebacker and he hasn’t played more than 641 snaps in any of the last 3 seasons, missing 14 games combined over that time period. However, he’s still graded out above average on Pro Football Focus in each of the last 3 seasons, including a 10th place finish this past season. He’s not an every down player anymore and he’s going into his age 30 season, but he can still be a very solid player on about 600 snaps for the next couple of seasons, which is the length of this deal (2 year, 12 million). There is some concern that he hasn’t played in a pure 4-3 since college, but it probably won’t be a huge issue.
All that being said, like with the Justin Tuck deal, I really don’t understand what direction the Raiders are going in this off-season. They’re using all their cap space to sign players who are 30+ (Justin Tuck, LaMarr Woodley, Antonio Smith, Donald Penn) to replace talented young players that they let leave (Jared Veldheer, LaMarr Houston, Vance Walker, Pat Sims). They haven’t overpaid anyone and I really like the one year deal that they signed Tarell Brown to, but the Raiders need to be focusing on a two-three year rebuild and this isn’t really the way to do it.
Grade: B
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