Tear Them Down! Raiders Are Blight On NFL Landscape
After the worst game in recent Raiders history another lesson was learned. Never pay any attention to pre-season rhetoric about everything being different. Similarly, turn the page when the Raiders talk about how embarrassed they were last Monday.
When DE Derrick Burgess told Sports Illustrated that the coaching technique of new coach Art Shell was refreshing, what exactly was he talking about?
The local papers have been loaded this week with quotes from the Raiders locker room about how mad they are or how mad they should be. Few, though, seem completely sure that anyone is actually upset about the opening night shutout, except for safety Jarrod Cooper. He's sure about being mad, although we're not sure if it's about the loss or the lingering embarrassment of buying feminine products for his wife at Safeway.
"I hope everybody in this locker room is mad. I hope these coaches are mad. I mean, I'm still mad. I can't go to the grocery store. I'm embarrassed," said Cooper to the Oakland Tribune.
What were we to expect? A Disneyesque feel-good story? I don't think Disney would even pick up such a sappy tale of a former player from the glory days returning to Oakland to bring back the magic that ironically he could not a dozen years past. Add an offensive coordinator who hasn't held a coaching job since 1994 for the same said heroic coach, tack on the implausible fact that he ran a tidy, small town bed and breakfast in South Dakota just last year and you'll find out that fiction is far from reality.
Their performance on Monday night begs the question, "Were the Raiders actually practicing up in Napa the last two months?
Offensive coordinator Tom Walsh continued to call the same plays even when it became painfully clear the revamped O-line couldn't block any pass rushers. When he got Randy Moss in the play. He found a quick pass for five yards so effective that he followed it up with the exact play.
Nobody is in control of this team because those in the football world who could control the Silver and Black would never dare take such a job. It's not because Al Davis's presence is so stark and disruptive, but because the organization is run like it's living in Roman Gabriel's generation.
Simply, if NFL teams are newspapers, the Raiders would be using typewriters, when the rest of the league uses computers.
The myth that Davis runs this team under an authoritarian microscope is false. Monday night shows that Raiders have been neglected to such a point that nobody wants to work for them, announcers publicly ridicule them over the air and their losing causes nothing but delight to most of America foreign the nation of Raider fans.
When DE Derrick Burgess told Sports Illustrated that the coaching technique of new coach Art Shell was refreshing, what exactly was he talking about?
"If we're doing a drill incorrectly, Art will stop the drill and point out exactly what everybody should be doing. That never happened last season. The coaches would see a problem and say they'd deal with it later, but it would never get fixed." Burgess then added preposterously, "Art handles things immediately."Has there ever been such a disconnect from reality in Raiderland?
The local papers have been loaded this week with quotes from the Raiders locker room about how mad they are or how mad they should be. Few, though, seem completely sure that anyone is actually upset about the opening night shutout, except for safety Jarrod Cooper. He's sure about being mad, although we're not sure if it's about the loss or the lingering embarrassment of buying feminine products for his wife at Safeway.
"I hope everybody in this locker room is mad. I hope these coaches are mad. I mean, I'm still mad. I can't go to the grocery store. I'm embarrassed," said Cooper to the Oakland Tribune.
What were we to expect? A Disneyesque feel-good story? I don't think Disney would even pick up such a sappy tale of a former player from the glory days returning to Oakland to bring back the magic that ironically he could not a dozen years past. Add an offensive coordinator who hasn't held a coaching job since 1994 for the same said heroic coach, tack on the implausible fact that he ran a tidy, small town bed and breakfast in South Dakota just last year and you'll find out that fiction is far from reality.
Their performance on Monday night begs the question, "Were the Raiders actually practicing up in Napa the last two months?
Offensive coordinator Tom Walsh continued to call the same plays even when it became painfully clear the revamped O-line couldn't block any pass rushers. When he got Randy Moss in the play. He found a quick pass for five yards so effective that he followed it up with the exact play.
Nobody is in control of this team because those in the football world who could control the Silver and Black would never dare take such a job. It's not because Al Davis's presence is so stark and disruptive, but because the organization is run like it's living in Roman Gabriel's generation.
Simply, if NFL teams are newspapers, the Raiders would be using typewriters, when the rest of the league uses computers.
The myth that Davis runs this team under an authoritarian microscope is false. Monday night shows that Raiders have been neglected to such a point that nobody wants to work for them, announcers publicly ridicule them over the air and their losing causes nothing but delight to most of America foreign the nation of Raider fans.
