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
No comments:
Post a Comment