Rupert
The Long Wind
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2005
- Messages
- 10,109
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You know, I don’t understand Raider fans today. I really don’t. I just had one tell me that suggesting the Raiders lost on purpose Sunday against Denver would be cause for him to stop supporting the team. He’d prefer to think that Art Shell and Tom Walsh are stupid.
The funny thing is that most Raiders fans feel this way. Tom Walsh is an idiot, and Art Shell proved his incompetence as a head coach by hiring him. Most Raiders fans think Al Davis is senile and needs to step down, so it doesn’t bother them that he hired Shell and approved the hiring of Walsh. The hires merely confirmed their beliefs about Mr. Davis.
But there’s one thing I cannot get over. It’s okay to pledge undying support to an organization whose owner has lost his mind; an owner who is committed to trying to rekindle past glories when everyone else knows it’s impossible; an owner who has made his organization the laughing stock of the league; an owner who has turned a plum destination for free agents into a prune; an owner who cannot hire or keep competent coaches and therefore has to resort to hiring out of loyalty and desperation. It’s okay to pledge your undying support to that kind of organization. But it’s not okay to pledge undying support to an organization that has evaluated the talent and determined that it would rather lose ugly for one season than win ugly and still not make the playoffs; one season of shuffling offensive personnel and grooming a quarterback; one season of going through the motions; one season of finding out who you can go to war with; one season of taking your lumps so you can have a better tomorrow. Some of those complaints, by the way, were ringing through Raider Nation during the past two lost seasons. “Why don’t they play Tui and find out what they have?” “They should give Walter some playing time to start the transition.”
Are there reasons to support the “lose ugly” theory? There are plenty:
Let’s look at wide receivers first. No-one understands why Alvis Whitted is starting over Ronald Curry. They can all understand why Porter went into the doghouse, but they can’t understand why he remains there (even though his behavior has been less than exemplary). But there’s little evidence that Whitted deserves to start over Curry. Whitted has incredible straight-line speed and fits the vertical stretch offense, but that doesn’t complement Randy Moss who is also a get open deep kind of receiver. Having two of those receivers on the field simultaneously goes against vertical stretch theory. Curry is a more reasonable complement to Randy Moss, or Alvis Whitted for that matter, but he’s relegated to third WR chores. Randy Moss has dropped so many passes that it’s ludicrous, but they keep running him out there instead of giving guys like Morant, or even Doghouse Porter, a shot every now and then.
Then there is Randall Williams at tight end. The guy put on 30 pounds of muscle in the off-season. He bulked up from being a receiver into a tight end. He didn’t lose an appreciable amount of speed, but he’s demonstrated that his hands lost some of their flexibility. In fact, they’ve almost gone stone cold. But the Raiders keep running him out there, and worse still, they keep throwing at him. Sunday he rewarded their confidence in him by hauling in 5 of the 8 passes thrown to him, matching the number of catches from the previous 8 games.
There has been a rash of mysterious injuries on the team. Aaron Brooks fumbles two consecutive snaps and mysteriously injures a pectoral muscle in week two. That injury is supposed to take two to four weeks to heal. Yet somehow in the ninth game, eight weeks later, it’s still a problem. Barry Sims pulls an abdominal muscle in week eight but isn’t injured enough to come out of the game. But come Monday morning, it’s too tender and there’s no scheduled time for his return. In the wee hours before week ten’s game it’s reported that Gallery injured a groin sometime late in the week and was be replaced by Slaughter at left tackle. Slaughter, who played well at right tackle previously and is more of a right tackle physically, has practiced most of the year at left tackle. Gallery and Sims were both struggling in their play but were left in as starters far too long for different reasons, Gallery is a number two overall pick and Sims has been a warrior for the team. Gallery’s mysterious game-day injury announcement looks more like a way to save his pride while they try to salvage any value he has left. Sims’s injury is also a way to save the pride of one of your own warriors who cannot cut the mustard anymore. The open-ended nature of both injuries allows the team to put them back in at a moment’s notice if their replacements are ineffective.
Then there’s the offensive game plan. Week one saw a diverse game plan get submarined by a tremendous talent imbalance. Many fans point to this as a sign that the coaches didn’t know how bad the talent really was. Then the following weeks see a severely limited game plan struggle against the better teams, and suffer from breakdowns against more comparable teams. People complain about the lack of passes to running backs, the preponderance of five and seven step drops by the quarterback, the preponderance of deep routes, too few screen passes. In essence, very little done to help protect a quarterback from a relentless pass rush other than take away receivers to make them blockers, which is of little use when his receivers can’t get open and his blockers can’t sustain their blocks. Some of the game plan decisions can be attributed to the lack of talent; too many passes are being dropped. Some of the game plan decisions are because of poor execution; not a single screen pass was well executed through the first eight games.
So we come back to the Denver game. In the first half the offense is diverse: there are well executed screen passes, there are outlet passes to the running backs, the blocking holds up, there are diverse passing plays with shorter routes and quarterback drops, and the running game is effective. Then, inexplicably, the second half looks like all of the ineffective game plans from the past: screen and outlet passes are abandoned, the short routes disappear, the most effective running plays are eliminated, and seven step drops become more prevalent. The two halves look like a tragedy played out on a Shakespearian scale.
How does it all add up? It’s easy to step back and accept all the negative press the organization has gotten. I don’t know of a single reporter that thought hiring Shell was the best move the organization could make, they almost uniformly claimed it was due to the poisoned waters in the organization that come from Al Davis himself. They derided the hiring of Walsh and emphasized Art Shell’s pledge to him after their last tenure with the Raiders as the only reason he was hired. They made it quite clear that they didn’t think he was of any value, and couldn’t possibly know anything about football after having been out of the NFL for twelve years and failing miserably at two head coaching positions at small fry teams. They pointed out he was Mayor of Nowhereville and ran a bed and breakfast as well. Those were plenty of reasons to ridicule him, Art Shell, Al Davis, and the Raiders.
So what do Raiders fans do? Do they return to the “us versus them” mentality of the organization from the old days? No. They jump on the media bandwagon and roast their beloved organization on a spit. They roast the new head coach. They roast the offensive coordinator. They conveniently forget that they roasted the defensive coordinator when he was brought in two years prior. They forget that many of them wanted him to be fired after last season too. They conveniently forget that the man they wanted to run out of town as the village idiot is now being praised for his defense. And they conveniently forget that I was one of the few voices to support Rob Ryan.
Was I right about Rob Ryan? Sort of. Back then, as today, I preached patience. I said there were things to like in the way he went about his business. I said there were signs he knew how to get the defense working. Today, I’m saying the same things about the offensive coordinator. For the past two years, people couldn’t see what I was talking about in Rob Ryan. This season, they can’t see what I’m talking about in Tom Walsh, but I’m taking even more heat than before because the natives are restless.
What are the similarities between Rob Ryan and Tom Walsh? When Rob Ryan came on board, he didn’t have enough talent on defense. Now the Raiders are far more talented than his first season, with plenty of kids and room to grow. I still don’t know if he can develop and maintain a shut down defense, but I do know he can field a very good one. Back when everyone was calling for his head, I only had glimpses that he could do it, nothing concrete. Today Tom Walsh doesn’t have a very talented group on offense. I’ve pointed out all the elements people say our offense lacks. The truth is it hasn’t lacked those elements. The real truth is it lacks those elements in the unspecified proportions that the media and they think it should.
Will Tom Walsh, like Ryan before him, be forced to do things Al Davis’s way next season? It’s not very likely, since Walsh is already doing things Al Davis’s way, at least that’s what everyone believes. Will Tom Walsh be fired after the season? That isn’t very likely either since Rob Ryan was allowed to fail miserably for two seasons while he put the talent in place to succeed.
The funny thing is that most Raiders fans feel this way. Tom Walsh is an idiot, and Art Shell proved his incompetence as a head coach by hiring him. Most Raiders fans think Al Davis is senile and needs to step down, so it doesn’t bother them that he hired Shell and approved the hiring of Walsh. The hires merely confirmed their beliefs about Mr. Davis.
But there’s one thing I cannot get over. It’s okay to pledge undying support to an organization whose owner has lost his mind; an owner who is committed to trying to rekindle past glories when everyone else knows it’s impossible; an owner who has made his organization the laughing stock of the league; an owner who has turned a plum destination for free agents into a prune; an owner who cannot hire or keep competent coaches and therefore has to resort to hiring out of loyalty and desperation. It’s okay to pledge your undying support to that kind of organization. But it’s not okay to pledge undying support to an organization that has evaluated the talent and determined that it would rather lose ugly for one season than win ugly and still not make the playoffs; one season of shuffling offensive personnel and grooming a quarterback; one season of going through the motions; one season of finding out who you can go to war with; one season of taking your lumps so you can have a better tomorrow. Some of those complaints, by the way, were ringing through Raider Nation during the past two lost seasons. “Why don’t they play Tui and find out what they have?” “They should give Walter some playing time to start the transition.”
Are there reasons to support the “lose ugly” theory? There are plenty:
Let’s look at wide receivers first. No-one understands why Alvis Whitted is starting over Ronald Curry. They can all understand why Porter went into the doghouse, but they can’t understand why he remains there (even though his behavior has been less than exemplary). But there’s little evidence that Whitted deserves to start over Curry. Whitted has incredible straight-line speed and fits the vertical stretch offense, but that doesn’t complement Randy Moss who is also a get open deep kind of receiver. Having two of those receivers on the field simultaneously goes against vertical stretch theory. Curry is a more reasonable complement to Randy Moss, or Alvis Whitted for that matter, but he’s relegated to third WR chores. Randy Moss has dropped so many passes that it’s ludicrous, but they keep running him out there instead of giving guys like Morant, or even Doghouse Porter, a shot every now and then.
Then there is Randall Williams at tight end. The guy put on 30 pounds of muscle in the off-season. He bulked up from being a receiver into a tight end. He didn’t lose an appreciable amount of speed, but he’s demonstrated that his hands lost some of their flexibility. In fact, they’ve almost gone stone cold. But the Raiders keep running him out there, and worse still, they keep throwing at him. Sunday he rewarded their confidence in him by hauling in 5 of the 8 passes thrown to him, matching the number of catches from the previous 8 games.
There has been a rash of mysterious injuries on the team. Aaron Brooks fumbles two consecutive snaps and mysteriously injures a pectoral muscle in week two. That injury is supposed to take two to four weeks to heal. Yet somehow in the ninth game, eight weeks later, it’s still a problem. Barry Sims pulls an abdominal muscle in week eight but isn’t injured enough to come out of the game. But come Monday morning, it’s too tender and there’s no scheduled time for his return. In the wee hours before week ten’s game it’s reported that Gallery injured a groin sometime late in the week and was be replaced by Slaughter at left tackle. Slaughter, who played well at right tackle previously and is more of a right tackle physically, has practiced most of the year at left tackle. Gallery and Sims were both struggling in their play but were left in as starters far too long for different reasons, Gallery is a number two overall pick and Sims has been a warrior for the team. Gallery’s mysterious game-day injury announcement looks more like a way to save his pride while they try to salvage any value he has left. Sims’s injury is also a way to save the pride of one of your own warriors who cannot cut the mustard anymore. The open-ended nature of both injuries allows the team to put them back in at a moment’s notice if their replacements are ineffective.
Then there’s the offensive game plan. Week one saw a diverse game plan get submarined by a tremendous talent imbalance. Many fans point to this as a sign that the coaches didn’t know how bad the talent really was. Then the following weeks see a severely limited game plan struggle against the better teams, and suffer from breakdowns against more comparable teams. People complain about the lack of passes to running backs, the preponderance of five and seven step drops by the quarterback, the preponderance of deep routes, too few screen passes. In essence, very little done to help protect a quarterback from a relentless pass rush other than take away receivers to make them blockers, which is of little use when his receivers can’t get open and his blockers can’t sustain their blocks. Some of the game plan decisions can be attributed to the lack of talent; too many passes are being dropped. Some of the game plan decisions are because of poor execution; not a single screen pass was well executed through the first eight games.
So we come back to the Denver game. In the first half the offense is diverse: there are well executed screen passes, there are outlet passes to the running backs, the blocking holds up, there are diverse passing plays with shorter routes and quarterback drops, and the running game is effective. Then, inexplicably, the second half looks like all of the ineffective game plans from the past: screen and outlet passes are abandoned, the short routes disappear, the most effective running plays are eliminated, and seven step drops become more prevalent. The two halves look like a tragedy played out on a Shakespearian scale.
How does it all add up? It’s easy to step back and accept all the negative press the organization has gotten. I don’t know of a single reporter that thought hiring Shell was the best move the organization could make, they almost uniformly claimed it was due to the poisoned waters in the organization that come from Al Davis himself. They derided the hiring of Walsh and emphasized Art Shell’s pledge to him after their last tenure with the Raiders as the only reason he was hired. They made it quite clear that they didn’t think he was of any value, and couldn’t possibly know anything about football after having been out of the NFL for twelve years and failing miserably at two head coaching positions at small fry teams. They pointed out he was Mayor of Nowhereville and ran a bed and breakfast as well. Those were plenty of reasons to ridicule him, Art Shell, Al Davis, and the Raiders.
So what do Raiders fans do? Do they return to the “us versus them” mentality of the organization from the old days? No. They jump on the media bandwagon and roast their beloved organization on a spit. They roast the new head coach. They roast the offensive coordinator. They conveniently forget that they roasted the defensive coordinator when he was brought in two years prior. They forget that many of them wanted him to be fired after last season too. They conveniently forget that the man they wanted to run out of town as the village idiot is now being praised for his defense. And they conveniently forget that I was one of the few voices to support Rob Ryan.
Was I right about Rob Ryan? Sort of. Back then, as today, I preached patience. I said there were things to like in the way he went about his business. I said there were signs he knew how to get the defense working. Today, I’m saying the same things about the offensive coordinator. For the past two years, people couldn’t see what I was talking about in Rob Ryan. This season, they can’t see what I’m talking about in Tom Walsh, but I’m taking even more heat than before because the natives are restless.
What are the similarities between Rob Ryan and Tom Walsh? When Rob Ryan came on board, he didn’t have enough talent on defense. Now the Raiders are far more talented than his first season, with plenty of kids and room to grow. I still don’t know if he can develop and maintain a shut down defense, but I do know he can field a very good one. Back when everyone was calling for his head, I only had glimpses that he could do it, nothing concrete. Today Tom Walsh doesn’t have a very talented group on offense. I’ve pointed out all the elements people say our offense lacks. The truth is it hasn’t lacked those elements. The real truth is it lacks those elements in the unspecified proportions that the media and they think it should.
Will Tom Walsh, like Ryan before him, be forced to do things Al Davis’s way next season? It’s not very likely, since Walsh is already doing things Al Davis’s way, at least that’s what everyone believes. Will Tom Walsh be fired after the season? That isn’t very likely either since Rob Ryan was allowed to fail miserably for two seasons while he put the talent in place to succeed.
