By Dylan Ehle
Rich Gannon. Jerry Rice. Tim Brown.
Bill Romanowski. Seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it?
Well, it has been
a long time. It’s been a decade since the
aforementioned Raiders players won the AFC championship game against the Titans to take
the Raiders to Super Bowl XXXVII. Since
Bill Callahan reaped the rewards of the team that Gruden built and took them to
the big dance – where, as we all know, they ironically lost to Gruden - the
Raiders have been completely irrelevant.
The Raiders have one of the most dedicated fan bases in football today,
and that’s incredible if you take a look at what they’ve had to deal with in
the past decade:
2003: 4-12
2004: 5-11
2005: 4-12
2006: 2-14
2007: 4-12
2008: 5-11
2009: 5-11
2010: 8-8
2011: 8-8
2012: 3-10 to date
Seriously. Love or
hate the Raiders all you want, but the fact that fans can be so dedicated in
the face of such horrible performances is truly remarkable. The Raiders are a storied franchise which
holds three Super Bowl rings and one AFL championship, and they truly were a team to be
feared in the 80s. They had so many
legendary games with the Steelers during that span, and they continued to be a
threat through the 90s and early 00s. After
that Super Bowl appearance, though, a star-studded Raiders cast quickly became
populated with lethargic players and horrible busts: Randy Moss, LaMont Jordan, Jerry Porter, and
the infamous JaMarcus Russell, just to name just a few.
Things seemed to take a turn for the better for the Raiders
in 2010, though. The defense was more
solid, led by the play of shutdown corner Nnamdi Asomugha. The editions of
RB Darren McFadden and speedy WRs Denarius Moore and Darrius Hayward-Bey gave
the Raiders’ offense several home-run threats every time their offense touched
the ball. I got a good look at this team
when they played the Jags in November of 2010. The teams got into a
complete shootout (and shootouts are rare in Jags games….when there are a lot
of points on the board, usually most belong to the other team, and it’s more
correctly called a rout). Anyway, this
game featured back and forth scoring, and a horrible lack of defense. It may have been the best game of Darren
McFadden’s career, as he broke tackle after tackle, hitting the second level in
the defense or turning the corner up the sideline for extra yards and first
downs. The Jags came back and won the
game, but I was shocked at how much grit the Raiders showed. Like everyone else, I had been clumping the
Raiders into the bottom-5 teams in the NFL for the past 7 years, I had
loved to see them on the Jags' schedule – it made an impression on me to see some
real playmakers on the field for Oakland.
Then came 2011. The
Raiders lost their icon, Al Davis, and won a huge game against the Texans the
ensuing week in his honor. Shortly
thereafter came the big trade for Carson Palmer. I thought that the Raiders gave up WAY too
much to get him. I know they were
panicking when Jason Campbell went down (watching his play this year for the
Bears, you have to wonder why anyone would panic upon losing him) and they were
trying to save their season, but seriously….two
first-round draft picks?! That’s far too much. That’s approaching what the Redskins gave up
to get RG3, and that was for a rookie with his whole career ahead of him, not a
veteran who has had multiple serious injuries throughout his career and only
had a few years left to play.
The Raiders needed those draft picks to build their future. If their team had been more solidified and
they were just a QB away, the move would have made a lot more sense, but few people thought that
the Raiders would make the playoffs last year, let alone challenge for the
Super Bowl. On the flip side, the Bengals cashed in on
their former QB, who was going to retire rather than finish out his
contract. They used the picks from the
Raiders to have one of the best drafts of 2012, which included top prospects
Kevin Zeitler, Dre Kirkpatrick, and Mohammed Sanu. Palmer has been below average in his time
with the Raiders, and has only put together 7 wins in the season and a half
since his arrival. While he gives the
Raiders much more of a vertical threat than they’ve had in recent years, he
throws so many interceptions that it completely negates it.
Facing their tenth straight losing season, the Raiders have
to take a really hard look at their roster.
While Al Davis brought a ton of energy to the franchise, he had a habit
for going after flashy players in both the draft and in free agency who didn’t pan
out. The Raiders need to use these last
few games to evaluate that talent and see what players are worth keeping. Davis gave up a third round pick in the
supplemental draft for Terrelle Pryor – you already know what you’re getting
with Palmer, so why not play Pryor for a few games to see what he can do? Darren McFadden’s contract is coming up – the
back has been injury prone, but he’s healthy now, so use him heavily to
see what he can do. Use Moore and
Heyward-Bey to stretch the field and see if they can actually haul in the deep
passes consistently or if they are just combine speed freaks. The Raiders have many holes on their roster
already, and need to know if any of these players will get them by as they
build in other areas, or if they present glaring positional needs that needs to addressed immediately.
After promising 2010 and 2011 campaigns, 2012 has
unfortunately painted a bleak picture for the upcoming few seasons for Raiders fans. Hopefully, new ownership will use
these last three games to build up some film on their players to do a thorough
offseason evaluation of the talent to expedite the rebuilding process. Only then will one of the NFL’s most storied
franchises return to glory.
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