Again, I think this is a blinders look at the full process of how a widely sought after player is approached before he officially would become a Free agent. If it wasn't just about the money, then it wouldn't matter what or when the Packers made offers. A good agent is going to know his clients value to other teams. He may talk to other GM's or depending on tampering rules, "get the word out" that his client might be hitting the trade market. In this case Davante's agent knew that the Raiders were his clients top choice. So guessing his agent probably found out from Mayock, who was the Raiders GM until he was fired on 1/17/22, what Davante might be worth to them. If nothing else, when the time came to reopen negotiations, he would have some numbers that other teams would pay. Mayock's firing might have slowed up or forced a restart of the process once Dave Ziegler was hired as the new GM on 1/30/22.
For all we know, Davante's mind to become a Raider was made up last summer. Maybe it was he/his agent that said to the Packers "Give us your offer and when we can legally shop Davante, we will get back to you." In that case, I doubt the Packers gave their top dollar offer, but they also probably didn't say "We are sticking to $23M/year or tagging him." As a matter of fact, it appears whether they told Davante or not, they were willing to top the Raiders offer.
