Here is a pretty clear indication of just how much the Oakland
Raiders stunk in 2006
Here is a pretty clear indication of just how much the Oakland Raiders stunk in 2006:
The team currently has an unsigned No. 1 pick quarterback (JaMarcus Russell), a 32-year-old first-year coach that missed a week of training camp while in the hospital (Lane Kiffin) and a key free agent acquisition at running back who will be suspended for the first four games of the season due to a violation of the substance abuse policy (Dominic Rhodes), and still, the Raiders are miles ahead of where they were at the end of last season.
The team completed its preseason Thursday night at Seattle finishing with some confidence-building games, but altogether meaningless scrimmages. The reason these four games are meaningless is the Silver and Black went 4-1 in exhibitions last year before going 2-14 in the regular season. The reason the games mean something is the players now know they have a plan.
“Last year, we had all these high expectations and high hopes, and we never brought that into the regular season,” linebacker Kirk Morrison said. “For the preseason, this is OK, but we’ve been down this road last year. We were 4-1 in the preseason, and then we felt like we couldn’t do anything when the season started. We need to take this in the season this time.”
Kiffin echoed Morrison’s thoughts.
“We need to establish a personality and an identity, and I really liked our aggressiveness (in the preseason),” Kiffin said. “When we do things right on defense, it’s hard to move the ball on us.
It’s the positive attitudes being shown by players and coaches that make this season look like it won’t revolve around a Commitment to Excrement.
Last year’s pathetic excuse for an offense included a slapstick cast befitting The Comedy of Errors – an offensive coordinator that had spent the previous several years running a bread and breakfast inn (Tom Walsh), a re-tread at head coach that made a “I just crapped my pants” face in crucial moments (Art Shell) and a quarterback of the future that looked like he had a future slinging salmon around the Seattle
fish market rather
than throwing footballs down the field (Andrew Walter).
The defense was the only reason for optimism. The overachievers managed to limit themselves to giving up 20 points a game, and considering how long and often they were on the field, it’s incredible the team didn’t surrender more points.
Walter, Aaron Brooks and the lazy receiver known as Randy “rolling-stone(r)-that-gathered-much” Moss, waltzed through games, taking one step forward before two steps back. Oakland quarterbacks combined for seven touchdowns and 23 interceptions while Moss pouted his way out of town, proving he was not, and never will be, a leader.
The one game I attended last year was the first win of the season, a sloppy affair in which Arizona coach Dennis Green didn’t crown anyone, but he did hand over another game after being publicly humiliated in a loss to the Chicago Bears a week earlier. As I drove into the parking lot, I saw a group of guys drinking malt liquor. One of them had a T-shirt that said, “Welcome to hell, bitch.”
Even the fans knew their team was putting them through the ringer.
The question now becomes, how much improved are the Raiders?
With Detroit, Denver, Cleveland and Miami before a bye week, 2-2 is certainly reasonable. The next seven weeks the team will face San Diego (a definite loss), Kansas City twice (let’s give them the split), Minnesota, Houston, Tennessee and Chicago (2-2 is fair). The record then stands at 5-6, more than double the number of victories the team had a season prior.
Over the final five games that leaves Denver again, the Colts, the Chargers, and two road games at Green Bay and Jacksonville. I’ll be optimistic and say 1-4.
The result is a 6-10 season that triples the win total from a year before – a 200 percent improvement. It ain’t much Raider fans, but compared to last season, you might just see a product on the field that doesn’t look like it emanated from a black hole.
