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LINCICOME: Pitiful Raiders keep sinking to new depths

By Bernie Lincicome, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published November 20, 2008 at 7:43 p.m.

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Well, said the Oakland Raider to the Kansas City Chief, at least we're not Detroit.

Apathy is the worst, just to look at things from the Raiders' point of view.

Always a boutique bunch, if so delicate a word can be applied to the grotesqueries who follow the Raiders. The roar of the few made the Raiders larger than they ever were, allowing such labels as Raider Nation to go unchallenged.

There has never been a nation as much as pockets of outcasts, attracted to an image of mavericks and oddballs, and not in a good way.

If the spiffy-clean Cowboys of Tom Landry used to be America's Team, the Raiders were America's Nightmare, obeying no rules, of conduct nor cleanliness.

They were summed up in Al Davis' Rove-ian phrase, "Just win, baby," altered in the present time to "Where's mine?" The echoes of the sentiment can be seen daily in the Dow Jones and news from Alaska.

To stretch the point, we are where we are because Davis and his ilk were admired and imitated, and so are the Raiders where they are for the same reason.

To say the Raiders are floundering is to assume recovery, imagining that progress is possible, and maybe another high draft choice will make it so.

If Iron Man is available. And then they would pick Daffy Duck.

Just as the Raiders get no sympathy for their present troubles - here in year six of the ongoing misery - neither do they get any attention, other than the tsk-tsking for Al Davis, defiant in his prime, merely sad now.

That is surely the unkindest cut of all, for the Raiders to be ignored or to be snickered at, when what they have always wanted is to be feared, to cause worry in weeks before they arrive in a town. It used to be hide your wife and children, the Raiders are coming. Now it is show some kindness, spare some change.

The Raiders are in that special limbo, with a provisional coach, Tom Cable. Provisional is a term used instead of the usual "interim" as a courtesy to Cable, who does not like to be interim even if he is as interim as a wet spot on the patio.

Cable is a grunt in the professional world of football, the fifth Raiders coach in the last six seasons, used to coaching the offensive line and around, really, just to handle the postgame press lament. He has taken over the play-calling duties, pretending it matters.

Cable replaced an authentic up-and-comer, Lane Kiffin, who was supposed to be the next Jon Gruden. All Kiffin seemed to have in common with Gruden was his resistance to Davis.

Davis said he fired Kiffin for insubordination and lying, generally considered two essentials of the Raiders world. Kiffin has filed a grievance for money he said he is owed. So far the NFL commissioner's office, which has lost often in battles with Davis, has not laughed in his face.

Amid the general turmoil there remains a season to be played, if for no other reason than to provide further proof that quarterback JaMarcus Russell may be the worst overall No. 1 draft choice since Tim Couch.

For the Broncos, the challenge is to take the Raiders seriously, to call plays without chuckling. Already, the Broncos have battered the poor souls in their own place, setting off from that point to what looked like the welcoming arms of glory.

Things have changed a bit since, for both teams, more traditionally for the Broncos - injuries and turnovers, mostly - and more bizarrely for the Raiders, degrading and dismissing the coach, getting fed up with an All-Pro cornerback, arguing with a fullback to play fullback, refusing to score an offensive touchdown since . . . well, in actual games it is three and a quarter; in world terms, since Alan Greenspan was still well thought of and General Motors was smiling.

The Raiders have scored fewer points than any team in the NFL, which ought to give the newly competent Broncos defense a break, and the revival of Jay Cutler and the Broncos offense should be enough not to need late-game rescues as in the last two weeks.

Still, these are similar thoughts to those before the game against Kansas City, when the Broncos promise first began to unravel and stayed in that condition for nearly a month.

Best to treat these Raiders as if they are still those Raiders. Even if they are not. And they are not.

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com

Comments

  • November 20, 2008

    8:39 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    Colorado69 writes:

    You are correct, it is hard to feel sorry for the Faiders. No one deserves the pain of losing more than Al "The Jerk" Davis.