Draft miscues are starting to add up for Raiders

By Mike Ash  |   Wednesday, September 05, 2007  |  Comments( 80 )

Oakland Raiders
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One month removed from cutting Darnell Bing, their fourth-round pick in the 2006 draft, the Oakland Raiders announced Saturday that they had released defensive end Quentin Moses, their third-round pick in '07. Moses was quickly claimed off waivers by the Arizona Cardinals, bringing an official end to his brief career with the silver and black.

The team's decision to part ways with these players may ultimately prove wise. Bing, for example, was cut again over the weekend, this time by the San Francisco 49ers. But the Raider organization can't be happy that it has essentially swung and missed on two valuable draft picks in back-to-back years. When the Raiders released Bing in July, he was the highest pick from the '06 draft class to have gotten cut. And as the first pick in the draft's third round, Moses has become the highest draftee from this year to get his walking papers.

Head coach Lane Kiffin tried to put a positive spin on the move, pointing out that Moses' release shows the Raiders are truly selecting the best overall players for the team, with no weight given to where someone was drafted or how much he might have been paid. And while that may be true, there can be no denying that whiffing on their third-round pick is something of a black eye for his coaching staff.

"There were some hard ones," Kiffin said of the roster cuts, "and it wasn't that a guy wasn't doing everything we asked. We wish great luck to Quentin and we think he'll be a good player in this league. But at the end of looking at all of it, we had other people that could help us more."

One of the players Kiffin is referring to may be rookie Jay Richardson, a defensive end taken in the fifth round. But even if Richardson turns out to be a late-round steal, it doesn't entirely heal the wound that was created by missing on Moses. Striking gold with a player in the final rounds is certainly a positive development for any team, but it's most beneficial when that guy's production is added to an already solid class, not when it has to replace the lost potential of a wasted pick.

Making the Moses issue even more glaring is the fact that, barring number one overall pick JaMarcus Russell finally getting his deal signed in the next few days, only one of the Raiders' first three selections from April's draft - second-rounder Zach Miller - will actually be on Oakland's roster when its season begins Sunday. And examining the Raiders' first-round picks in recent years opens up a whole new can of worms.

After taking Michael Huff over Matt Leinart in 2006, a decision that some in the Raider Nation have - to put it politely - come to question, the last thing the team needed was another iffy selection at the top of its draft. But with the re-emergence of a healthy Daunte Culpepper, it may only be a matter of time before the decision to take Russell is second-guessed by even the most hardcore Raider fans.

Oakland is undoubtably moving in the right direction in a number of different areas, but the amount of shaky draft decisions being made may be a cause for concern. Whether those decisions set the Raiders back is something that can only be answered with time.
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CommentsComments: 80  |  Sign Up  View all comments
No.1
Jason		02:08 AM
09/05/2007
These roster cuts don't make much sense. They all smell like Al Davis making personnel moves based on his gut again. Darnell Bing...
No.2
blat		02:32 AM
09/05/2007
I for one was furious immediately after the draft, specifically because we did not appear to draft for our most glaring needs....
No.3
La Milicia Negra		02:33 AM
09/05/2007
Doug Gabriel can't have been that good, Art Shell, Belichick and Kiffn, all three gave up on him...Makes you think... Michael...
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