Precious few of Raiders general manager Reggie McKenzie’s free-agent signings have panned out this season. Cornerback Tarell Brown, on the other hand, has acquitted himself well in his first go round with the team across the bay from the one he used to play for.

That, of course, would be the 49ers, the team that Brown spent the firs seven seasons of his NFL career playing for, including 2011-13, when the 49ers sandwiched NFC Championship Game appearances around a Super Bowl appearance.

The 49ers opted to go young and cheap at cornerback this season, which forced Brown to hit the free-agent market. McKenzie wasted little time handing Brown a one-year, $3.5 million contract.

Brown has rewarded McKenzie and the Raiders with a very solid season at a position that has been in flux since McKenzie arrived in 2012.

“The guy goes out there and he gives you a solid day’s work every single day out there in practice, and that’s important,” Raiders coach Tony Sparano said. “He’s been a durable player back there for us. I’ve been really pleased with what he’s done.

“He really is a good pro, a good guy to sit and visit with when you’re just talking about your football team a little bit and you want to pick somebody’s brain. He’s a good guy to sit and visit with that way. I like all the things he brings to the table for us. And I like the way he plays.”

Brown knows the feeling of playing for a losing team. However, he grew accustomed to winning in a big way during 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh’s first three seasons.

So far this season, the Raiders are 1-11. However, fired coach Dennis Allen and interim coach Sparano have managed to keep the team from splintering, pointing fingers and shutting down.

“I’m still jacked up about signing here,” Brown said. “I love the guys. I love the locker room. I love the organization. We just don’t have the wins we feel like we should have. We let a couple slip through our hands, and it’s a learning experience. When you have a younger team, you have those ups and downs and things of that sort, but I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world.”

McKenzie, or whoever is calling the shots for the Raiders in 2015, is going to have somewhere in the neighborhood of $70 million to spend in free agency.

Investing some of that in Brown seems like a pretty sound strategy. As for what McKenzie thinks about Brown, who knows? He still hasn’t spoken with the media since the season started — the news conference to introduce Sparano as coach doesn’t count, either.

Cornerback has been a revolving door, or sorts, in the McKenzie era. He signed Ron Bartell and Shawntae Spencer in 2012, and both players flopped. Last season, he signed Tracy Porter and Mike Jenkins as his starters. Porter and Jenkins played better than their predecessors.

This season, McKenzie turned to Brown and fellow former 49ers cornerback Carlos Rogers. Brown has sparkled from the outset. Rogers played well, at times, before he suffered a knee injury and was placed on season-ending injured reserve last week.

— If you’re wondering how many carries each running back is going to get against the 49ers on Sunday, or whether wide receiver Rod Streater will be activated to the 53-man roster, don’t bother. Sparano is going all Bill Parcells on these matters, thinking it gives the Raiders a competitive edge.

Some might counter that having Tom Brady at quarterback or Barry Sanders at running back gives you a true edge. But, hey, to each his own.

“He’s getting closer,” Sparano said about Streater’s rebound from a broken foot. “We still have some more time here, so whether or not I see him getting there or not, you guys will have to find that out on Sunday.”

Actually, the deadline is Saturday, so coach Sparano might be disappointed to learn that the 49ers are going to have more time to react to the news of whether Streater is active or not.

As for the running backs situation, now that Latavius Murray is back to full strength, you really will have to wait until Sunday to see how that unfolds.

Sparano already knows how he’s going to handle the workload. Again, he’s pulling a Bill Belichick or Sean Payton and keeping such classified information to himself, certain that doing so is of immense benefit to the Raiders.

“I’ve got a pretty good idea in my head of what I want the rotation to be before Sunday as we get going right now,” Sparano said.

Care to shed anymore light on the situation, coach?

“I can’t tell you about the number of carries,” Sparano said. “In other words, it just depends on how the game is going at that point. But when I say rotation, I’m talking about who I see in when, and then if the carries come, they come.”

San Francisco defensive coordinator Vic Fangio is going to be pretty disappointed when he reads this blog post and discovers that he’s going to have to wait to see if Streater is going to play and how Sparano intends to use his running backs.

Oakland offensive coordinator Greg Olson had this to say Thursday:

“We’re all excited to see him now that he is healthy again and give him the opportunity to carry the football this week,” Olson said. “There is some anticipation, and there is some excitement this week seeing him out on the practice field. We’re excited to see him play.”

— Punter Marquette King is on pace to set the franchise record for most punts in a season. Naturally, that’s a record he would care to avoid. However, the absurd number of punts doesn’t detract from how well he’s performing in his second season.

“He’s been really important,” Sparano said. “He’s been a real bright spot in a lot of situations.

King has a 45.3 gross average. More impressive, he has 24 punts inside the 20-yard line vs. only two touchbacks.

“I like what he’s done right now,” Sparano said. “He’s getting better and better. He’s knocking the ball down in tight there. I realize, like anything else, he’s a guy that needs to continue to get better, but he’s really starting to figure the thing out.”

— Fourth-year receiver Denarius Moore has gone from a promising young player to an afterthought in short order. He has fallen so far that he wasn’t even active against the Rams last Sunday.

“A little bit of that is just the progress of some of the other players, too.” Sparano said. Kenbrell [Thompkins] has come on and done some good things in flashes and has shown us some good things. Vincent Brown has come on and has shown us some good things there. We feel like at that position right now, there’s a couple of guys there that we’ve had to get a look at and we kind of like what we see there.”

In the interim, Moore is keeping his head down, working hard and waiting his turn.

“D-Mo’s working hard out there,” Sparano said. “I appreciate what he’s doing out there on the field. … I’m sure at some point here with the next four weeks, we’ll see. He may get another opportunity out there and if he does, I’m sure D-Mo’s ready to make the most of that opportunity. He’s practicing really much better.”