Mark Davis says he offered 20 percent stake in Raiders to Athletics owner

If Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis is to be believed, the Oakland Athletics could have helped keep the NFL team in the East Bay long-term.

Davis has been trying to pacify angry football fans in Oakland since announcing the Raiders' impending move to Las Vegas last week, though this claim may not help matters. In a radio interview on Tuesday, the longtime executive appeared to place some of the blame for the move on the shoulders of his co-tenants at the Oakland Coliseum, Major League Baseball's Athletics, who've had trouble finding a new stadium themselves.

According to Vic Tafur of the San Francisco Chronicle, Davis told KGMZ 95.7 The Game that in 2014 he attempted to sell then-A's majority owner Lewis Wolff a 20 percent stake in his football team with the intent of helping both sides solve their stadium issues. Wolff rejected that proposal, and according to Davis, that ended his dream of building two new stadiums on the current site of the Coliseum.

Wolff, who is now only a minority owner of the baseball team, seemed to dispute the idea that his Athletics were ever close to buying a piece of the Raiders, or that he could have even helped save the beloved football team for the city.

"I do recall Mark saying that a minority percentage owned by, I think, passive investors could be for sale," Wolff told the Chronicle. "However, no price or terms were discussed.

"We did not see any reason to enter professional football, as our desire was, and is, to have a new baseball venue in Oakland."

The Athletics signed a 10-year lease to remain at the Coliseum - their only home since moving to Oakland in 1968 - following the 2014 season. They began their second stint sharing the aging stadium with the Raiders in 1996, having also done so from 1968-81.