Raiders will forever be in neutral with Davis at the top

By Anthony Carroll  |   Wednesday, September 10, 2008  |  Comments( 75 )

Oakland Raiders
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There’s something to be said for the way wide receiver Ashley Lelie played Monday night for the Oakland Raiders.

Those players who are least diluted by Oakland’s career-killing, divisive organization are best off.

Lelie had been a member of the silver and black for just six days heading into the Raiders’ 41-14 trouncing at the hands of his former team, the Denver Broncos. But Lelie looked good. He looked better than any other Raider receiver. The 28-year-old, after less than a week of practice in Alameda, Calif., is the team’s most productive pass catcher in terms of yardage and scoring.

It’s the same way the Tim Dwight story played out last year.

Oakland brought in the now-retired wideout in Week 9 of last season and he finished off the year fourth on the team in TD catches and first in yards per reception for any receiver with more than one grab. The 33-year-old Dwight looked crisp, reliable and disciplined. He looked like he cared. He didn’t look like an Oakland Raider.

On Monday night, everyone else looked like an Oakland Raider.

The offense didn’t put a point on the board for three consecutive quarters. The ‘D’ surrendered more than 440 yards of total offense and over 40 points. Three different players were flagged for unnecessary roughness four different times during the game (cornerback DeAngelo Hall was caught twice on one drive). The team, as a whole, was penalized 10 times for 96 yards; Hall alone was penalized for more yards than the entire Denver team.

“It’s one game,” second-year head coach Lane Kiffin said Tuesday. “There are 15 other teams that are 0-1 just like us, regardless of the score. If we come back this week and go to Arrowhead and win, we’ll be 1-1, and everyone will be talking about that game.”

But it isn’t one game.

For Oakland, it’s been 62 games over the last six years. And the Raiders haven’t rebounded to win a Week 2 contest since 2004. And, to make matters worse, Rich Gannon was quarterbacking the team for that 13-10 victory over the Buffalo Bills.

Since the franchise downfall in 2003, the team has given quarterbacks Rick Mirer, Kerry Collins, Aaron Brooks, Andrew Walter, Daunte Culpepper and Josh McCown all legitimate starting time. All have failed. They’ve gone through four coaches: Bill Callahan, Norv Turner, Art Shell and now Kiffin. No success there. Randy Moss came and failed; then he went elsewhere and succeeded. And he probably won’t be the last player to do that.

But through it all, there’s been one common denominator: 79-year-old Raiders owner Al Davis, who’s been as instrumental to American football as perhaps any figure still alive today, but as detrimental to his own franchise over the past half-decade as any owner can be.

His stubbornness to practice a laissez-faire ownership has turned off well-qualified head coaches and caused several others to be prematurely fired. And the same stubbornness to admit a mistake has allowed other coaches like defensive coordinator Rob Ryan to stick around perhaps a year or two too long. (Did Ryan blitz once on Monday?)

“Before we make statements that we’re not any good at one certain thing, let’s play a couple games and look at it,” Kiffin added. “We definitely have the ability to be a great pass defense.”

Despite bringing in big names Hall and Gibril Wilson this offseason to accompany CB Nnamdi Asomugha and S Michael Huff, Oakland’s secondary still allowed QB Jay Cutler to throw for 299 yards and two TDs. A rookie receiver, Eddie Royal, beat the high-profile Raider secondary a whopping nine times for 146 yards and one score.

Royal just looked more motivated. He wasn’t any more athletic than any defender in Oakland’s secondary.

“You go through so many things in football and in other parts of life, just continue to grind and keep moving forward,” quarterback JaMarcus Russell said Tuesday. “Take your mind off some of the bad things that happened and just act like it never happened.”

For the young Russell, that seems to be the best attitude he could take.

Unfortunately, fans have had to put up with about 50 more losses than Russell has over the last six years. Acting like it never happened isn’t going to fly.

And with Al Davis at the top, that number will keep on growing.

Anthony Carroll can be contacted at
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About Anthony Carroll

Anthony Carroll began writing for RealFootball365.com on Sept. 26, 2005, making him one of the longest tenured contributors to the “365” team. As a senior writer, Anthony has taken on the task of delivering original content to the silver and black faithful year round, despite having to deal ...
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