Running back Maurice Jones-Drew isn’t going to be making nearly as much money as a Raider as he was when he was with the Jaguars, but he will get a chance to do something that other teams weren’t offering him this offseason.
He’ll get a chance to compete for playing time, something he told Adam Schein of Mad Dog Sports Radio that he wasn’t going to be given if he signed with some of the other teams that he spoke to before signing with Oakland. Jones-Drew said he narrowed that list of teams down to the Raiders, Patriots and Steelers and that he made his ultimate choice because of the opportunity to battle for carries with Darren McFadden.
“On the field, they’re going to give me a chance to compete,” Jones-Drew said. “A lot of teams had already kinda conceded that I didn’t have anything left and all these different questions they may have had. Oakland’s going to give me a chance. And they gave me a deal that shows that with incentives.”
Jones-Drew also spoke highly and hyperbolically about the team’s other offseason acquisitions, particularly when he said quarterback Matt Schaub can “definitely” lead the team to a Super Bowl. That’s not going to be a particularly popular opinion, although it doesn’t seem like that was necessarily Jones-Drew’s top priority for his 2014 home anyway.
