The Raiders made 4 moves late in the first day of the new NFL league year.

Declining to resign any of their 17 free agents the Raiders watched as both of their top free agents, LB Phillip Wheeler and DT Desmond Bryant signed large contracts with other teams – Wheeler for 5 years, maximum contract of $26M and with $13M guaranteed by Miami and Bryant with Cleveland for a 5 year deal worth up to $34 million.

The Raiders weren’t likely to be able nor interested in resigning either player for those amounts and wisely let both players go.

The team wasn't idle, though, announcing this evening that they had cut two former top ten players in S Michael Huff and WR Darrius Heyward-Bey.  Both Huff and Heyward-Bey were well liked in the locker room and both are known as hard workers and team players but both were set to earn well more than their play on the field deserved and the NFL is a business before anything else.

It seems likely that one if not both was designated a “June 1^st” cut which will spread the accelerated cap hit over both 2013 and 2014.

The Raiders are unlikely to make an early splash in free agency but that doesn’t mean that they won’t be able to find some great players.

The Raiders have needs on the offensive line and the defensive line, in the linebacking corps and in the secondary.  They also have to find a starting tight end.

Not all of these positions will come in free agency, of course, but the Raiders can find some good value in a free agency that lacks some of the blue-chip, marquee players of past free agencies but has a good depth at some positions in which the Raiders need help.

Specifically, there are a number of experienced, if older, cornerbacks and linebackers that have been released in recent days and weeks.

These Raiders may not jump on any position right away but the depth in the position will allow them to leverage a buyer’s market for the service of one or two of their favorite players at these positions.

The Raiders made their first significant off season move today when the team reached an agreement to a restructure of veteran Mike Brisiel’s contract.

Brisiel, the team’s most expensive free agent pickup a year ago underwhelmed at right guard although GM Reggie McKenzie indicated that he thought Brisiel might have been hampered more by an ankle injury that required him to have after-season surgery than by a lack of talent.

The terms of the restructure are not clear but what was disclosed, by Steve Corkran of Contra Costa Times, is that Brisiel’s cap number for this year was reduced from $4.35M down to $1.35M.

I’ve consistently heard questions since the end of the NFL’s season – “when will the Raiders going to start resigning their players?”  “Why haven’t the Raiders cut anyone yet?”  Why isn’t Reggie McKenzie doing anything to restructure some guys?”

The answer I’ve offered each time was patience – McKenzie didn’t need to do anything yet because there wasn’t any deadline to do anything.  McKenzie, like his mentors in Green Bay, is very deliberative.

Looking back at Green Bay’s transactions, they historically do not cut or restructure their players until the week before free agency.

There are several reasons to do this – one is that it allows the GM his staff to make full evaluations and a plan of what they would like to do.  They can go through tape, look at contracts recently signed and make sure they have a solid range on what they feel each potential cut, resign or restructure is worth.

This is important because, as any good negotiator knows, it can get heated during the negotiation.  If you come in without your strengths considered, your range set and an idea of how you want to present your side you can get caught up and pay too much for someone in the heat of the moment.

Every team has 60 interviews they are allowed at the Combine.  And, chances are that most if not all of the Raiders 2013 draft class had an interview with the Raiders in the Combine that started last week and lasted through Tuesday.

Every year, when the draft picks are interviewed for the first time after the Draft invariably they say that they met with the Raiders at the Combine and then didn't hear from the team again until Draft day.

This is because usually all NFL teams go out of their way to seem uninterested in players they are actually very interestedin acquiring so teams that pick around them won't take "their guy."

It's impossible to know everyone who met with the Raiders at the Combine unless the Raiders released a list which, of course, they would not do.

Instead we rely on players giving that information out.  Some of these players, like Geno Smith or Tyler Bray, are known interviews because the players said they spoke with the Raiders in front of the media.

Others may have just told one media member in passing so they are unconfirmed interviews.

Either way, here is the list of known or reported players who met with the Raiders as part of the team's 60 interviews allowed at the Combine:

Raiders DT Desmond Bryant’s arrest for Criminal Mischief might have gone unnoticed in most circles – he’s not a household name after all – except for two things.  First, his name is very close to the Cowboy’s WR Dez Bryant (a fact that tripped up more than one national writer into initially saying it was the Cowboys receiver that was arrested in Florida) and second, he had one of the best/worst mug shots you’ve ever seen, depending on how you feel about it.

Bryant’s mug shot went viral all around twitter after it was released.  It is rather classic.  The Raiders, who used to be known as the bad boys of the NFL, have been much more tame recently, not having the same issues that they used to have with players getting arrested.  However, reputations die hard and many comments were centered around the Raiders having “another player arrested.”

Perhaps the problem isn’t the frequency – the Raiders are actually fairly low in terms of the numbers of arrests in recent years – but the high profile of the people involved.

Under the new Raiders regime the Combine isn’t expected to be as important as it was to the team under Al Davis.  Davis famously and publicly coveted speed, size and athleticism and felt that he could teach an exceptional athlete to play football.

Raiders second year GM Reggie McKenzie has specifically mentioned that he’s targeting football players, first and foremost.  No longer will the Raiders be the bastion for fast but inconsistent football players.

So, the Combine will not carry the weight that it did under Davis, that much is clear.  Football players don’t start or stop being football players at the Combine.  The best it can do is clarify what each player can bring to the table athletically.

The Combine did help bring some clarity to positions the Raiders may target – at defensive end for example – where some players really stood out.

Coming into the Combine there were 5 Defensive Ends all vying for being named the top spot, named alphabetically: Ezekial Ansah, Dion Jordan, Barkevious Mingo, Damontre Moore and Bjoern Werner.