Art Shell. Thumbs up? Thumbs down?

Can Art Shell lead the Raiders to a World Championship?


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Crossbones

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UGH...didn't need this Whisenhunt/Petrino news today. It sucks.

OK...moving on. It would appear Art Shell is emerging as the most probably Raiders head coach. I love Art Shell. I thought he got a raw deal the first time and even Al Davis agrees.

My concern is that Art has been out of coaching I think for the past 3 years (maybe it's only two). Can he take control and bring back the magic? Does he have enough experience to pickup the new schemes and other things going on in the NFL? Can he restore order and get the players focused on the taerget?

So the question is: Can Art Shell lead thed Radiers to a world championship?
 
I don't think he has the capacity to lead the Raiders back to a Super Bowl...he was never great at developing talent, and I dunno if he's creative enough on offense to succeed in the NFL right now.
 
The issue with Art Shell isn't his X's and O's. He's a solid foundation that players respect. He might not be able to whup 'em anymore, but who is going to give him shit? No-one.

I think part of the problem Art had his last time around was his OC. Does anyone think Terry Robiskie was an innovator? The word is that John Shoop will be our OC. Is he an innovator? I don't know. What I do know for sure is that only Jimmy Raye struck me as worse than Robiskie as far as Raider OC's have gone, but Robiskie was worse when it comes to innovating (much worse).

Additionally, Al Davis has had 3 WCO HC's since Art left, the last two of which proved pretty damned good at getting the offense going and using the tools on the field. So I would expect that type of influence will remain in some of the formations, route combinations, and QB reads we will see since Al Davis had a large influence in what happened during Art's tennure.
 
JC said:
I don't think he has the capacity to lead the Raiders back to a Super Bowl...he was never great at developing talent, and I dunno if he's creative enough on offense to succeed in the NFL right now.
A quick question. Who has been great at developing talent here? Not Gruden. Not White. Not Shineyhand. Not Turner. Not Bunghole. Not Callahan.

The only way to determine how well someone develops talent is to see them around for some time. Two years? The guy disappears, the scheme is changed, new guy brings in his people, and then he disappears.

You also have to consider what he's given to work with. The perfect example is Gibson. He has all the athletecism in the world, but he doesn't know how to drop his ass to make a tackle. That should have been a red flag when evaluating him. The guy can make all the killer tackles he wants in college, but you have to consider the level of talent he's facing. Then you have to project his style on the field to the NFL level. If he's gotten away with his poor technique his entire career, there's little hope of ever changing it. If he can continue the success at the NFL level, you got lucky; if not, you got what you deserved. In Gibson, we got what we deserved, a decently aggressive player with good man skills and poor technique that is inconsistent as a tackler. You can't make that kind of player your last line of defense (even though the SS rarely is the last line of defense).
 
I'm not at all sure that "developing talent" is the major quality of the head coach. Having a strong, technically solid, coaching staff is where developing talent comes in. Sure there are exceptions but I don't believe developing talent should be the number one quality you look for in an NFL coach.

What if we had Rich Gannon as our QB coach? What if we had a guy like Shell coaching the OL? -- he did it for the Raiders for seven years and they were nails. What if we had James Lofton as our WR coach?

Point is Art Shell, in my view, has a presence that commands respect. I think the players would welcome that. Remember Randy Moss saying we need a hard nose? I think Shell is pretty close. The problem he had the first time around is that his coaching staff tried to undermine what he was doing. Not sure how that all went down and maybe that's a bigger problem than I want to admit. I dunno.

Anyway, given the circumstances, having Art Shell as our head coach might be what we need. A guy who knows Al Davis and understands how to operate in t hat environment. It’s not to say that Whisenhunt or Petrino wouldn’t have done a great job because I think either would have but we all know the problems in Oakland that pushed them away.

We're going to know soon. I don't see how Al can drag this out much longer.
 
So....you don't think Jim Fassel is in the mix anymore then? Just wondering. :)
 
Jim Fassel is bigtime in the mix, I think Al likes the fact that he made Kerry Collins win...dunno how, but he did.
 
I think we can win with Shell. He'll need a good to excellent OC, but I think he has all the tools necessary to be an excellent HC.
 
XLRaider said:
I think we can win with Shell. He'll need a good to excellent OC, but I think he has all the tools necessary to be an excellent HC.

Thats exactly how I feel.:)
 
I feel confident that Art and the staff he puts together will make us a better ball club. Shell will turn this thing around, in my opinion.
 
Do we have an OC yet, or are we still trying to figure that part out?
 
I think it is the latter but the rumor is that Tom Walsh will be the OC, Jackie Slater the offensive line coach, and Irv Eatman assumes the same position he had in KC, assistant offensive line coach.

I don't much about Walsh other than what I posted before...so knowing if he is conservative in his play calling is a major question. Robiskie was supposedly the OC for much of Art's first go around. I know Walsh spent a lot of years with us.
 
Crow said:
Do we have an OC yet, or are we still trying to figure that part out?
Maybe, just MAYBE, Al will let the HC choose the OC :)
 
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Edited by CrossBones

No spamming goof ball!
 
shell hires tom walsh as our oc

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Per KFFL
Raiders | Walsh officially hired
Thu, 23 Feb 2006 05:54:46 -0800

Jerry McDonald, of the Oakland Tribune, reports the Oakland Raiders have hired Tom Walsh as their new offensive coordinator. Other than a brief stint coaching minor league football in 1999, Walsh hasn't coached full time since resigning under pressure as head coach at Idaho State after two seasons and a 6-16 record.

ALSO

Raiders | Sims hired
Thu, 23 Feb 2006 05:58:01 -0800

Jerry McDonald, of the Oakland Tribune, reports the Oakland Raiders have hired Daryl Sims as their new defensive line assistant coach. He will work under defensive line coach Keith Millard.
Raiders | Slater hired
Thu, 23 Feb 2006 05:56:38 -0800

Jerry McDonald, of the Oakland Tribune, reports the Oakland Raiders have hired former NFL OT Jackie Slater to work with Irv Eatman and the Raiders offensive line
 
Hey Bones....were those 2 really banned? Just curious!! :)
 
Angel said:
Hey Bones....were those 2 really banned? Just curious!! :)
Yeah. After I checked them out...one had a Russian email address and the other was just some sort of spammer. I've seen that before.
 
Here is an article on our selection of Art....

Shell, Raiders remain perfect fit

By Michael Smith


LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- How do I say it? There is something really right, something quite natural, something rather appropriate, fitting, just plain good about Art Shell's coaching the Raiders again, representing the franchise -- with his presence at Tuesday morning's AFC coaches/media breakfast and every day through his persona -- again. Shell's return is all those things not just for Oakland but for the league, for the game.

Some of the hires this offseason, you might call them head scratchers. Not Shell's. The Raiders' search for a head coach was prolonged and confusing, but in the end, settling on Shell made so much sense.

And so now here he is, after almost a dozen seasons, back where he belongs, again a member of the elite fraternity of NFL coaches. Blending in and yet still standing out, because if you had to do it all over again and match each coach to a club, Art Shell should always be a Raider. Tuesday he wore a white Raiders polo and black pants to breakfast. He's even got the silver hair going.

"It's good for Art and it's good for the Raiders," said Chiefs coach Herman Edwards, seated at the table next to Shell's.

Next to Edwards' table, Tony Dungy holds court. Romeo Crennel and Marvin Lewis are over on the other side of the room. On Wednesday morning, Dennis Green and Lovie Smith will meet with the media. There are an all-time high seven African-American head coaches. Shell was the first, back in 1989. He's also the latest. Yet another season why it's good to see him back.


"He's part of that Raider family," Edwards continued, "that folklore, The Nation. At the end of the day, he is a Raider."

Meanwhile, the Raiders haven't been themselves: their nasty, aggressive, confident, bad (not bad meaning bad but bad meaning good) selves the past few years. Try 13-35 over the three seasons since losing Super Bowl XXXVII. Oakland put itself back on the map in the early part of the decade under Jon Gruden, but the reality is the greatness of the Raiders has been missing since Al Davis fired Shell and his .586 winning percentage after the 1994 season. Try eight losing seasons since.

Last season, in going winless in the division, the franchise hit rock bottom. Enter Shell, the Hall of Fame and eight-time Pro Bowl left tackle and perhaps more important, a career Raider. Who better to try to revitalize the Raider mystique, to connect the past with the present, than a man who helped create it in the 1970s?

It's a shame that Shell was made to wait as long as he did for a second chance while watching as so many less-qualified coaches came, went, and, in some cases, were recycled while Shell, after stints on staffs in Kansas City and Atlanta following his exit from Oakland, drifted as far from the sideline as the league office. Shell had interviews, including a five-hour sit-down with the Dolphins last year, but no job offers.

"I wasn't sitting there looking out the window waiting for an opportunity," Shell said. "But there was always an attraction to being on the sideline, working with the players."

No, it wasn't right that Shell was denied another opportunity. But in the end, right now, everything's right. Shell is where he belongs. It's hard to imagine his having been another team's head coach.

"The Raiders, that's home to me," he said. "That's where I grew up, spent 27 years in that organization. To come home and try to bring the team back to its winning ways, it's exciting to me.

"It's like when your father calls you and tells you it's time to come home."

Shell's greatest challenge might not be getting the most out of newly acquired quarterback Aaron Brooks or maximizing the talents of Randy Moss or getting a young defense to play well but rather getting the team to understand what it means to be a Raider. One of Oakland's problems last year is that the players didn't comprehend that games at Denver, at Kansas City, weren't regular road trips. Those are rivalries, and those teams' fans hate anyone in a Raiders uniform. If you're a Raider you have to love that, being hated.

Shell has to teach guys who were babies the last time the Raiders ran things how to go about winning … baby. It's a simple formula. The Raider mystique returns when Oakland starts winning again. How much they win depends on how hard they work. Accountability is a big theme in Alameda, Calif., these days. The Raiders had collectively forgotten that ideal the past few years. Progressively the professionalism left the building.

"People talk about mystique," Shell said. "Mystique in my mind, like I told the players the other day, [is] about toughness. What is toughness? Everybody has a different idea about what toughness is. Toughness to me is execution. I can line up and run a route on you and I'm successful, and we've got to have it again, I'm going to run that route and I'm going to beat you. If I'm an offensive line, we're going to block you, get 5 yards, when we come back, we'll get 5 more yards. That's toughness. That's execution.

"That's where I've got to get them to, to where when we come into a game, we will have to conduct ourselves to win. There's a certain attitude we have to have.

"I really believe I can get the players to understand when they hear statements like, 'Commitment to Excellence,' that they understand what those statements mean. They are phrases to some, but they mean something to me."
 
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