Now that the offseason: draft, free agency, camp, and preseason are over we can finally make some kind of assessment that isn't cobbled together by interns for bored ESPN writers. I won't bore you with who made the final roster and who didn't. There were bodies that won't be here next year competing for spots they're going to play poorly in. That's the real roster story. If meaningless tedium and minutia is your thing, you're in the wrong place. So let's take let's a look at what matters.
This team has some $50 million in dead cap money. If you thought Reggie McKenzie should have been wheeling and dealing for the the best free agents on the market, then you haven't been paying attention. Like I said before, we have a roster full of bodies, not talented NFL players. Since Al Davis last scrawled his signature on a multi-million dollar contract for an unbelieving player's agent, 2013 was always going to be a rebuilding year. So that's that.
After months of OTA's, mini-camps, and actual camp, the Raiders opened the preseason against the Cowboys. Mind you, I care very little about what the 2nd, 3rd, and hopeless strings did. It's the starters that matter. Now, you'll hear people say things like preseason doesn't matter, that teams only run vanilla schemes and other regurgitated canards that were true ten years ago but don't hold water today. Nowadays, while teams don't necessarily run their full offense and defense, they do run most of it. And even if the whole vanilla thing had any truth to it, the fact is that the opposition's vanilla beat the living crap out of ours.
In the first game against Dallas, we didn't look too shabby. We had some players make some good plays. McFadden looked good coming out of the back field; Matt Flynn looked serviceable; the defense made some stops. Then we played the Saints.
The city of New Orleans has something of a bizarre history with necrophilia (seriously, look it up). Someone should have told the Saints that that was a long time ago and that the Raiders weren't a vulnerable corpse. Apparently no one gave Sean Peyton and Drew Brees the news. Our first teams on both sides of the ball offered the Saints as much resistance as the carcass of an octogenarian laying face down on a concrete slab at the morgue.
Next week against Chicago it was even worse. The defense gave up 27 first half points, didn't force a punt, and with our starting offense still in the game against the Bears second team defense, we finally managed a field goal as time ran out in the first half.
This past Thursday the Seahawks starting offense, without their starting running back, took the opening kickoff against our starting defense and bounced down the field for a touchdown. Watching the Raider defense reminded me of a Monty Python skit where a grown man boxes a little girl with pigtails, knocking her down again and again. But the little girl in the skit put up more of a fight. Then Seattle's second team offense came in a pushed our starting D all over the field, scoring on every possession. The story was the same for our offense. Terrelle Pryor started and left the game with a quarterback rating of under 10. No, I didn't forget a zero; it was 9.8.
At this point you might be wondering why I'm being so hard on the team when I've acknowledged the dearth of talent. I'll agree with the person who says that no coach living or dead could forge even a .500 record with this team. But here's the deal: you, me, and anyone else can be the head coach of a horrible NFL team. The year the Detroit Lions went 0-16 they literally could have hired a cat to be their head coach and gotten the same results.
In the NFL, coaching, especially with the salary cap in place, is the most important ingredient to success. We've seen it ourselves with the Raiders. Jon Gruden took over for Joe Bugel the year after Bugel's team went 4-12. In one season Gruden produced an 8-8 team with almost the exact same talent. And had Jeff George not gotten injured that would have been a playoff team. But even with Donald Hollas at quarterback, that Raider squad fought like hell and were one criminally bad call away from being 9-7.
So what did Dennis Allen do with the 8-8 team he took over? The record speaks for itself. And this year, while we shouldn't expect a lot of wins, we have the right to expect competency; and so far we've seen nothing to indicate that competency exists at the head coaching position. And when I say that nothing our starters have done has worked, it's almost entirely true. Our starters versus the first team opposition have scored ten points in four games and given up well over 50.
Of course the team could get better as the regular season wears on. If we get shellacked by the Colts but improve steadily over the course of the season to the point where opposing teams don't want to play us, that's good. Then Dennis Allen will have earned another year. But it's not going to happen. Last year had a better, more talented team and the schedule was easier. This year he has less talent and is playing a tougher schedule. If someone told you they couldn't bench press 250 pounds but 300 shouldn't be a problem you probably wouldn't invite them to your 8 year old's birthday party.
With the exception of Art Shell's second abortive tenure as Raiders head coach, last season was easily the most embarrassing since the team escaped being named the Senors by the voters of Oakland. This preseason and talent level at the coaching and player levels promises something as bad or worse than 2-14.
In my last post I mumbled something about explaining why Dennis Allen is still the coach of the Raiders after last year's performance. First off, Reggie McKenzie can't admit that he botched his first head coach hire. I don't say that with derision, I understand it and agree with it. The Raiders have a reputation, courtesy of Al Davis, for being a coaching turnstyle. If McKenzie would have given Allen the heave-ho after just one season, the talk would have been that McKenzie was a puppet. The rumors would have been that Mark Davis was just like Al Davis, pulling strings behind the scenes. The perception that the Raider organization is the least desirable place in the NFL to work has be put in the ground along with Al. The team needs to be able to attract the best and brightest in the league.
By keeping Dennis Allen around and allowing him to hire and fire his staff as he sees fit, McKenzie sets the tone for the future. The Raiders now operate like modern NFL franchises do. They pay a fair salary, allow the necessary leeway for coaches to do things their own way, and are treated with respect regardless of what happens on the field. Future prospects have to be confident that Oakland (or possibly L.A. soon) is a place they can come and expect to have the same chance to succeed as anywhere else.
So as of now, Dennis Allen is more of a symbol than an actual head coach for the Raiders. If the dude goes 2-14 or worse, or if the team is a disaster in general, it won't look bad to fire him at the end of the season. People around the league will understand.With some $50 million in available cap space for use in free agency and several high draft picks, we can expect to be able to compete with almost any other team in the league for top talent in both coaching and players.
Oh, my prediction for our final record this year is 2-14 in case that wasn't already clear. At some time or two we'll be someone else's most humiliating moment of the season. But next year exciting things should start to happen. McKenzie will be able to begin building a team and have no excuses if we go ass up.
Next Time: Why using the word "We" when referring to our favorite sports teams is totally appropriate and why people who say it isn't need to stop harboring bitterness for being shitty at sports when they were kids.
After That: Preview of Raiders vs. Colts: Countdown to the Draft
Saturday, August 31, 2013
2013 Oakland Raiders Pre-Preview
Before beginning this thing a little background on this upcoming season needs to be established. So here you go.
When Al Davis slid into oblivion in early October of 2011, Raider fans around the world expressed grief and sadness over the loss of one of America's greatest football legends. But like the death of a rich, burdensome relative, many of us high-fived each other behind closed doors. Within weeks (hell, hours) we were rubbing our hands together at the prospect of the team being yanked out of 1985 and into the present day by a savior, a general manager. To many Raider fans, Al is a sacred cow and that's fine; he's out to pasture now. But the reality is that we needed someone who could turn this creaking shithouse of an NFL organization around so that some day we would no longer have to play Charmin to the rest of the league's bathroom breaks.
Mark Davis is the son of Al Davis and now owns most of the team. He's a man with a comic book haircut and more sense than his dad had at the end of his years. That's why he hired Reggie McKenzie to GM the team after Al left to file lawsuits against football leagues in the the afterlife.
At the time, McKenzie was hailed as the best man for the job after all his years and experience with the Packers. I happen to agree with that. Since coming to the team McKenzie has begun to modernize the franchise, make reasonable personnel decisions and dragged the franchise by its horrible haircut through an ocean of dead cap money. As of now the Raiders organization is paying tens of millions of dollars to players who aren't even on the team anymore. But it's what needed to be done. If you're friends with someone who says otherwise, stop being friends with them. They're dangerously moronic and their stupidity could stain your clothes.
That's not to say that McKenzie hasn't made his share of blunders. The firing of Hue Jackson and subsequent hiring of Dennis Allen is likely one of the worst mistakes the Raiders new GM could have made. If nothing else than for stability's sake, Jackson should have been retained through the 2013 season. The team had a solid offense and excellent special teams. It's big problem was its defense, a system so antiquated it's taught to high school JV teams. Of course most of the players sucked and many were overpaid: Richard Seymour, Stanford Routt, and Kamerion Wimbley immediately come to mind. On their salaries alone every starving kid in Somalia could have begun competing with American children for skyrocketing cases of Type II Diabetes. At any rate, what's done is done. McKenzie hired Dennis Allen to much fanfare, gave him a NDL size contract and the power to hire anyone he wanted. And jeez Louise did Dennis Allen go on a hiring binge.
Seemingly unaware of the skill sets of the players on his roster, Allen hired Greg Knapp, a man who'd managed to get fired from three offensive coordinator positions before he came aboard last season. It's worth mentioning that one of the offensive coordinator positions he'd been given the boot from before last season was the Oakland Raiders. Yep. Halfway through his second season the offensive guru, Tom Cable, had to take play-calling duties away from Knapp; and it wasn't because the offense was scoring too many points. Predictably enough, when Knapp re-assumed his duties in Oakland last year a dynamic offense full of players built around speed, vertical passing, and power running was transformed into a quivering dung heap masquerading as a west coast offense.
As for special teams, Dennis Allen let go of John Fassel, a guy who brought life and point scoring to the special teams and replaced him with Some Guy. Some Guy did the same thing to the special teams unit that Knapp did to the offense. Full equality was achieved. Every unit sucked equally.
Defense? We didn't have one before Jason Tarver took the reigns from Al's last defensive coordinator, Chuck Bresnahan, and we didn't have one last year. It was a unit riddled with injuries and lazy-assed millionaires. Like standing in one vat of manure for six hours and then jumping into another vat of manure, things were pretty much the same.
Three Dennis Allen hires, two abject failures and one that couldn't fairly be evaluated except to say he didn't improve anything. Like a cartoon character paralyzed by the piano that's about to fall on him, Dennis Allen could only watch while everything he did crashed down on top of him. He and his staff stubbornly stuck to the stuff they worked on in preseason and dammit, not even losing games by an average of 16 points was going to deter them. To be fair, there was a token attempt to mix in some power run blocking toward the end of the season but the horse had already fled the barn, got hit by a truck, and was being melted down in a glue factory. Dennis Allen's first year as head coach of our Oakland Raiders was a comic/tragic exercise in failure. It took a historically bad team in the Chiefs, a bumbling Steeler team, and the Jags losing their starting running back and quarterback in a ten minute span for Allen's Raiders to win any games at all.
Yet he's still here. There are good reasons for that though. That'll be in the preview-preview. Thanks for reading.
When Al Davis slid into oblivion in early October of 2011, Raider fans around the world expressed grief and sadness over the loss of one of America's greatest football legends. But like the death of a rich, burdensome relative, many of us high-fived each other behind closed doors. Within weeks (hell, hours) we were rubbing our hands together at the prospect of the team being yanked out of 1985 and into the present day by a savior, a general manager. To many Raider fans, Al is a sacred cow and that's fine; he's out to pasture now. But the reality is that we needed someone who could turn this creaking shithouse of an NFL organization around so that some day we would no longer have to play Charmin to the rest of the league's bathroom breaks.
Mark Davis is the son of Al Davis and now owns most of the team. He's a man with a comic book haircut and more sense than his dad had at the end of his years. That's why he hired Reggie McKenzie to GM the team after Al left to file lawsuits against football leagues in the the afterlife.
At the time, McKenzie was hailed as the best man for the job after all his years and experience with the Packers. I happen to agree with that. Since coming to the team McKenzie has begun to modernize the franchise, make reasonable personnel decisions and dragged the franchise by its horrible haircut through an ocean of dead cap money. As of now the Raiders organization is paying tens of millions of dollars to players who aren't even on the team anymore. But it's what needed to be done. If you're friends with someone who says otherwise, stop being friends with them. They're dangerously moronic and their stupidity could stain your clothes.
That's not to say that McKenzie hasn't made his share of blunders. The firing of Hue Jackson and subsequent hiring of Dennis Allen is likely one of the worst mistakes the Raiders new GM could have made. If nothing else than for stability's sake, Jackson should have been retained through the 2013 season. The team had a solid offense and excellent special teams. It's big problem was its defense, a system so antiquated it's taught to high school JV teams. Of course most of the players sucked and many were overpaid: Richard Seymour, Stanford Routt, and Kamerion Wimbley immediately come to mind. On their salaries alone every starving kid in Somalia could have begun competing with American children for skyrocketing cases of Type II Diabetes. At any rate, what's done is done. McKenzie hired Dennis Allen to much fanfare, gave him a NDL size contract and the power to hire anyone he wanted. And jeez Louise did Dennis Allen go on a hiring binge.
Seemingly unaware of the skill sets of the players on his roster, Allen hired Greg Knapp, a man who'd managed to get fired from three offensive coordinator positions before he came aboard last season. It's worth mentioning that one of the offensive coordinator positions he'd been given the boot from before last season was the Oakland Raiders. Yep. Halfway through his second season the offensive guru, Tom Cable, had to take play-calling duties away from Knapp; and it wasn't because the offense was scoring too many points. Predictably enough, when Knapp re-assumed his duties in Oakland last year a dynamic offense full of players built around speed, vertical passing, and power running was transformed into a quivering dung heap masquerading as a west coast offense.
As for special teams, Dennis Allen let go of John Fassel, a guy who brought life and point scoring to the special teams and replaced him with Some Guy. Some Guy did the same thing to the special teams unit that Knapp did to the offense. Full equality was achieved. Every unit sucked equally.
Defense? We didn't have one before Jason Tarver took the reigns from Al's last defensive coordinator, Chuck Bresnahan, and we didn't have one last year. It was a unit riddled with injuries and lazy-assed millionaires. Like standing in one vat of manure for six hours and then jumping into another vat of manure, things were pretty much the same.
Three Dennis Allen hires, two abject failures and one that couldn't fairly be evaluated except to say he didn't improve anything. Like a cartoon character paralyzed by the piano that's about to fall on him, Dennis Allen could only watch while everything he did crashed down on top of him. He and his staff stubbornly stuck to the stuff they worked on in preseason and dammit, not even losing games by an average of 16 points was going to deter them. To be fair, there was a token attempt to mix in some power run blocking toward the end of the season but the horse had already fled the barn, got hit by a truck, and was being melted down in a glue factory. Dennis Allen's first year as head coach of our Oakland Raiders was a comic/tragic exercise in failure. It took a historically bad team in the Chiefs, a bumbling Steeler team, and the Jags losing their starting running back and quarterback in a ten minute span for Allen's Raiders to win any games at all.
Yet he's still here. There are good reasons for that though. That'll be in the preview-preview. Thanks for reading.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)