Another Disappointing Raiders Season

Another National Football League regular season has ended and the playoffs have begun, and as usual, the Oakland Raiders are nowhere to be found. The Raiders have just finished their seventh consecutive season with at least 11 losses and their prospects for the future do not look any brighter. The Raiders had some bright moments, but they will need to make a ton of changes if they plan to be competitive in 2010.

Raiders head coach Tom Cable, despite his personal problems, made some radical decisions that might possibly cost him his job. The biggest decision was the benching of top draft pick and supposed franchise quarterback JaMarcus Russell. Russell was ineffective as the Raiders´ starting quarterback, and replacing him with Bruce Gradkowski gave the Raiders the spark that they were looking for, but what should have been a team strength, turned out to be their greatest weakness.

Gradkowski came in and suddenly showed that the best quarterbacks are not always #1 draft choices and it takes more than a big arm to be a great quarterback. Unfortunately, it also takes an effective offensive line, and the Raiders did not have one. You would have thought that with Cable´s career as an offensive line coach, that this would be one of the strengths of the Raiders. However, their failure to protect Gradkowski caused him to suffer a season ending injury and forced Cable to make another difficult decision. Cable brought Russell in to finish the game, but chose to go with Charlie Frye to finish the season. The Raider offensive line could also not protect Frye, who was knocked out of several games, which Russell had to finish. Without the effective offensive line, the Raiders had very little in the way of a running game, and that also made the quarterbacks have to work harder and, by default, less effective. This is also without mentioning the inexperienced receiving corps, led by first-round disappointment Darius Heyward-Bey. Better receivers and a better offensive line can make an average quarterback good and a good quarterback great.

As bad as the offensive line was, the defensive front seven was just as bad. The Raiders finished the year as one of the worse teams in the league against the run. Many of the Raiders´ losses this season came as a result of the fact that teams knew that they could run against the Raiders. The victories that the Raiders earned early in the season came due to teams thinking that they could mail in their effort and win, as Philadelphia did. These teams abandoned their running game and allowed the Raiders to stay in the game. John Madden used to say that games were won in the trenches, and the Raiders were not dominant on either side of the line.

The Raiders´ kicking game was as solid as always, but Sebastian Janikowski did not get many chances to perform due to the Raiders inability to move the ball and get him opportunities. Shane Lechler led the league in all of the important punting statistics, and was tied for second in punts, with only San Francisco having more, and the Niners were not much better than the Raiders this season, but having as many opportunities as Lechler had, one would figure that his numbers would not be as good as they were, but he is the best player on the team, and he showed it again this season. If the Raiders could get three or four more players who were as proficient at their positions as Lechler was and is, the team would be in great shape.

The Raiders have some great athletes on the roster, unfortunately, not all of them are football players. With Al Davis at the helm of personnel decisions, he needs to revert back to what made him and the team great in the past; drafting and signing good football players, no matter what the rest of the league thought about them. When Davis developed his affection for the fastest players on the board instead of the best football players, this was when the Raiders started to fall apart. The Raiders need to start drafting, and signing through free agency, football players, no matter how fast or slow they can run. This is the way, and the only way, that the Raiders can return to relevance.